alignment specs

Belgian1979vette

Belgian1979vette

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Apr 4, 2008
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Koersel/Belgium
I have been looking for correct alignment specs. The info that I have in the workshop manual seems to suggest a postive camber setting, which I find very odd.

What is the concensus here as to an alignment setting that provides good performance and tire wear ?
 
I'm not looking to Hijack this thread but my question sort of ties in and may be illuminating.

What is the effect of castor variations on the rear of the Corvette (or little GT6 racecar). The specs vary on the chart from touring to fullrace.

I understand the effects of caster on the front adding self centering and stability. Is this the inverse on the rear when we want the rear to come out aggressively for racing but be stable for touring? I do this with a zero toe that goes toeout when the body rolls to the outside. rearsteer. Is this the same effect of positive castor? Or do I have pos and neg backwards...Hmmmm

Positive castor puts the inclination such that contact patch trails giving a self center on the front, right?

What's it do on the rear?
 
Well, this was the first time I used the alignment rack to it's full extent.

The thing stated that I specifically set toe on the front as last. First the rear camber, rear toe, front caster, front camber and then front toe. Had to do it a couple of times before I got the alignment pretty much ok. I seemed to get axle offset especially on the front which was caused mainly by a difference in caster. Finally got it tweaked the same left and right and bingo the axle offset came in right.
 
Most of those, outside of possibly the stock specs, should be good for radial tires. A lot of C3s were sold with fairly skinny bias ply tires, so one has to be a bit careful when reading the factory specs. I've always felt that the VB&P specs were a pretty good street/performance compromise. Working for Hunter Engineering, I learned more about wheel alignments and suspensions than I ever thought I would... :eek:
 
Sam Cogley said:
Most of those, outside of possibly the stock specs, should be good for radial tires. A lot of C3s were sold with fairly skinny bias ply tires, so one has to be a bit careful when reading the factory specs. I've always felt that the VB&P specs were a pretty good street/performance compromise. Working for Hunter Engineering, I learned more about wheel alignments and suspensions than I ever thought I would... :eek:
Click to expand...

I must say, since this was a first time experience a learning curve was involved. At first I didn't seem to get it good. When I remeasured everything after the first time I set alignment, it never got back to the same values again. It turned out to be the play in the steering housing, which caused the steering wheel to turn and the wheels not to turn. The wheels never seemed to get back to the same point causing the device having trouble finding the vehicle's axle. Once I solved that it fell into place.

It took me more time than anticipated because before I set the body on the frame the tires were leaning severly out (positive camber). A measurement showed that my towers hadn't sagged, so I concluded the offset upper-arm axles were causing too much positive camber. I turned them around. That proved to be a problem since later on, they got too much negative camber and I had to turn them back to the original position, which meant removing the rad and such...:clobbered: Now I just have to remount the rad and other stuff and I can move on to installed carpets, seats and doors and ....testdriving
 
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