Alignment, Caster, Clearance, and Driving Report with Light Racing UCAs

I have SPC ucas. Sounds like he reduced my caster when he actually should have increased it. Also sounds like I had it in a good spot before but my toe was messed up. From the side it looks like my tires are sitting further towards the rear now and I'm slightly rubbing.

 

has your guy worked with SPCs before? depending on how they are installed the caster may be limited, so they may need to be setup correctly. also he should move the LCAs forward which some miss. i agree with @71tattooguy , but also if you go straight to 0.0 toe it will be floaty at highway speeds. a little toe-in, even on both sides.

 

He said he handles lifted trucks all the time, but I didn't give him much information about the upper control arms. I've already had them set to D the past few years but I haven't gotten an alignment done in a long time so I didn't have the numbers in my head I just kind of assumed he knew what to do. Going back over there on Friday hoping to give him some solid numbers to achieve.

 

Post photos of front and rear cams on your lca and also the position of the spc cam.

 

Front


Rear


That should be the D setting. It's the passenger side

@Asianguywithatruk I'm going back today to see if they could adjust it Forward more. Here are the pictures

 

They fixed it! No more rubbing. Pretty much back where I was before (a few posts up) with the Toe in a better spot






33s 255s fit nicely. Next task... Restore the headlights

 

I have spc installed, rides nice. Currently 265/75/16 going to 255/80/17s, steering wheel little crooked.

 

Man I'm going through hell with the spc control arms. Most of the setting on here seem to be for 3" lifts so I'm not sure if I should be aiming at something different.

Took it to Firestone for lifetime alignment and they just argued with me and opted to give me my money back lol.

Took it to another independent shop but the best they could get me was

Camber 0.5 and 1.5
Caster 3.8 and 3.5
Toe 0.3 and 0.3

This is with the eccentrics maxed out and the spc ball joints set at D and pulled all the way out to try to get 0 camber.

I also rub when I reverse now.

They're willing to mess with it again to try and get it right, I know it has to do with the setting on the ball joints for the spc arm but I'm not sure which way to tell them to move on it. I'd like to set the ball joint at home if I could take it to them just to fine tune it if possible.

Previously on stock uca I had

1.5 and 1.5 camber
2.5 and 2.7 caster.
And I didn't rub at all.

Any thoughts? I'd appreciate any help with this! I'll continue reading in the meantime lol.

2012 TRD OR Fabtech 6" lift, Bilstein front struts and spc UCA 33x12.50x20.

 

post pics of your alignment cams.

 

What are you trying to achieve? W/a 6" lift you don't have clearance issues like most who are dealing with with maxing out the eccentrics to get caster. They should be able to adjust the lowers to get your camber to 0. Your caster numbers should come down when they do that too, but they're not bad as is.

Those toe numbers just look like laziness.

 

All I really wanted to do was get my camber right, that's why I went with spc. But currently my cams I believe are at max camber and the spc is max camber and I'm still negative camber plus I rub now.


With my caster setting as is currently I'm rubbing at reverse. If I reduce my caster to improve my camber, wouldn't that make my rubbing even worse?

Or am i understanding it incorrectly? I appreciate the help man!

 

Please excuse my crummy angles, I'm holding a 3 month old baby trying to take these at the same time lol.

Passenger side

 

Driver side

 

Rotate the rear cam 180 degrees so the cam is facing the other direction. Rotate the front cam 35 degrees counter clockwise so the thick part of the cam is pointing out towards the wheel. Mirror these settings on the drivers side. Once this is done then use the SPC for all camber and caster fine tuning.

 

For you guys with caster maxed out on lowers on both sides for clearance...are you running the spcs caster on the same setting or different on each side?

I just got another alignment and asked the tech to max out caster on lowers and use uca to do camber. He seemed to know how/why I wanted it and was more than happy to do it. I got the truck back and drivers(left) side is almost 100% max caster and passenger side (right) is not even close to max caster (front cam about 45 degrees up from longer and rear about 45 degrees up from shorter or to put it differently both 45 degrees are towards the tire side). But my caster is 3.3 driver left and 3.8 passenger (camber 0.2 driver 0 passenger) right even though drivers has lowers maxed and passenger side not even close. Meaning it seems like passenger side has more built in caster by default and if he maxed it the cross caster would be way too big.

Unless I'm understanding this wrong it seems like I would need to run the SPCs at D on drivers and E on passenger, or E->F to be able to have both sides on the bottom maxed out and not have huge caster differences?

 

I am about to e-enter this hell. Truck went through a minor crash but was realigned and I have been slightly rubbing ever since. I have not been able to find a shop who gets what I need. Last time I aligned myself and was maxed out on caster adjustment driver side and about half way there on the passenger and had +1* camber. But it drove fine and did not rub. Interesting to read your right and left are also different. I’m curious why that happens.

 

Welp. I’ve never had any luck getting a local shop in my area to take the time to understand SPC alignments. I recently did some front end work and needed an alignment, so I spoke with SPC techs, spent hours reading TW threads and YouTube videos, etc. I tracked down “the best” alignment tech in town and was assured over the phone that they “work on lifted trucks all the time”. Cool!

Made an appointment for today and promptly watched the shop manager and master technicians’ heads explode when I explained to them the general process for maximizing clearance and fine tuning with the UCA. Tried showing him the SPC instructions and a YouTube video as well.

I was told that if they have to “take apart the upper control arm”, they’d have to charge me at least an extra $100, and it would probably be on the rack all day.

In hindsight, I should have just done the initial adjustments myself before taking it in but I was optimistic that it wouldn’t be an issue based on what I was told on the phone. Beyond frustrating. I’ll be taking the time to learn how to do it myself in my garage.

 

A decent work around is to put them in the G setting and show them the camber adjustment on the upper, then let them at it. You'll end up w/the lowers maxed out so that they can get the caster in "spec."

 

Seems a little odd. Are the upper ball joints in about the same position in the slot camber-wise?

 

Disregard my post…Im an idiot went and double checked the cams and they are in fact not even close to maxed on either side even though I asked for it. I got confused and had pictures saved pre-alignment where they were maxed on one side but not the other and post alignment my caster numbers were only different by 0.1 so I just assumed he only fixed toe and moved the top camber bolt a bit inward (they’re same position in each side I measured)