Alignment Specs (heeelp!)

Wow, this thread has been awesome to read. Glad to have found some real alignment geniuses here. I'm about to pull my hair out with my truck. I brought my truck in to get another alignment from the dealer, which I heard the mechs knew how to do alignments, so I figured maybe they can help me out. Trying to get the Caster up to at least closer to 3.0 with it being at 2.4 before they tried to align my truck. King CO's @ 3", TC UCA's, and 285/70/17's. So the Mech's come back and tell me "Its good, it just pulls really hard to the right"... Okay? Final caster was 3.0 on driver, and 2.1 on Passenger. Both were "maxed" out without affecting Camber drastically. How could it go from 2.4 to 2.1 on Passenger and now be maxed out? Does that make sense? Truck is spending the night at the dealership and they're doing a realignment tomorrow.

 

Its hard to say without seeing the before and after specs, or the exact location of the cams but when you adjust the lower cam bolts front or rear they both change camber and caster at the same time.. If the right side camber angle truly is maxed for positive caster with a good camber angle then they need to go back and readjust the left side to match.. camber will always pull to the high side while caster pulls to the low side. If camber is even Left to right and your caster is .9 of a degree low on the right the vehicle will pull right because caster is lower. the same goes for camber if your caster angles were even and the camber was higher on the right vs the left the truck would pull right..

 

3" seems pretty high, but with the TC UCA's you should be able to get it close. There shouldn't be such a difference between left and right with your setup.

Keep us updated as to what they are able to get you to.

 

So got my truck back today. New mech this time got it to 3.9 driver and 3.1 Passenger. Now the driver won't come any lower and the passenger won't come any higher lol. Made an appt with a 4x4 shop that's local so until then I'm gonna get real good at letting my truck make right turns for me.

 

Just curious, do you have really bad taco lean. Maybe that is throwing it off. Mine was really bad after dakars and 885's. Taco Lean to the driver side 1 1/2" in the rear and just under an 1" up front.

 

No taco lean. Just garbage alignment lol

 

That's really shity.. Either they are really not trying or they are really incompetent.. You now have a 5 tenths split on camber high being the right and still have a 9 tenths split on caster being low to the right side. both camber and caster individually are causing a pull to the right.. I hope you didn't pay them for the alignment. If you did Id have them realign the truck again I cant believe that they don't have someone able to align it properly. did you just recently install the lift and control arms? the only thing I can think of that would screw with the alignment was if the UCA's were installed backwards LF on RF but that cant be the issue because that would cause you to lose caster which clearly is not the issue here.

 

take a look at your LF cams when you get a chance if caster is truly maxed as low as it will go the top of the cam on the rear will be pointed straight out @ 9 o clock if you were looking straight at it and the front cam would be a 3 o clock.. that would yield you the lowest possible caster that's not to say that camber wouldn't be way out but if the cams aren't close to that or rotated in that general direction then that would mean that there is defiantly adjustments to be made. My best guess is that the front cam is closer to 9 o clock and the rear cam is near 3 o clock.. the front cam raising camber and caster while the rear is lowering camber and raising caster which would explain the lower camber on LF..

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/alignment-issues-caster-adjustment.506028/page-2#post-15840472

Heres the link with all the info for my alignment adventure. Pics of the eccentrics are on pg2!

 

Just as I guess the front cam is near 9 o clock and the rear is near 3.. the cams need to be rotated in the opposite directions to yield you a good camber angle with a lower caster angle. Like I mentioned earlier if You paid the Dealer talk to management explain the issue and have them have a experienced tech align your truck

 

heres mine for comparison - I realize 5.4 and 5.8 is higher than most would reccomend on here, but it still drives fantastic, and doesn't rub at all, which is why he probably aligned it that way. If and when i decide to upgrade to 35s, i'll have him drop the caster down around 4 degrees.

 

If you don't have any issues Id run it but Ideally you would want your camber split to be zero meaning that camber is the same left to right that way you see even tire wear on both front tires.. .4 split is not bad but if you get technical the Lf might see slightly more outside edge wear while right side would slightly more on the inside edge.. Like I said the difference is minimal and depending on your driving you wont notice any difference in wear. just something to think about.

 

Tag for later reading.

Still deciding my lift...

 

I have gone through about 20 threads for research and this one seems to have the best feedback and most knowledge in one thread. Hence, I'm dragging it back out. My numbers used are strictly hypothetical and are used strictly to verify that I have an understanding of the geometry.

Caster 4.5/4.5
Camber 0/0
Tow 0/0

Question: If is the upper control arms in position (G) , the wheel will move FORWARD in the well, and the Caster will go down to 2.5 (mathematically)?

I do know camber will be affected, but remember this is for understanding the geometry of the UCA.

Where as, if I use position (A), the opposite will happen, and the wheel will move REARWARD in the well, but the Caster will go up to 6.5 (mathematically)?

 

What position would technically be the factory spec on the LRs? I know they reccomend the default setting @ 2 degrees but what if you were on factory coils and wanted to retain factory arm specs.

 

I just went through an alignment nightmare. After installing King 2.5", UCA's and Deaver springs, I bought a "lifetime alignment" from Firestone since it was on sale and I'm always tweaking ride height on my vehicles.

I had to go through 3 horrible alignments with worthless/clueless techs before I found what Firestone calls an "Alignment Specialist" that knew what he was doing. He was able to zero in the toe (0/0) get close to 0 with camber (+.04 on each side) and get caster around +2.5 on each side. I think I could go higher on the caster, but am happy with it as is.

One of the techs I had to painfully watch "perform" an alignment LITERALLY just put a wrench on a random bolt near the front IFS and started torqueing stuff around. Too proud or embarrassed to admit he had no clue what he was doing and blamed not being able to align it on my "lift kit".

Sigh...seem so many paycheck grunts working at these big box franchise places and very few true professionals. I guess you get what you pay for.

 

Your understanding seems to be correct.. what makes these control arms beneficial over others is the ability to adjust camber. This allows you to max both lower control arm cams for positive caster pushing the tire forward (helps clear cab mount) doing so will result in high camber which can then be dialed out with UCA..

 

Awesome. Thank you very much for the reply. I appreciate it. Maybe this one could be the sticky go to thread? As I stated earlier, this one seems to have the people that know what they’re doing, and know how to explain it to those of us that have always depended on the tech knowing what they are doing.

 

no problem

 

Rsssurecting this thread from the dead.

Put on a brand new pair of 275/70/17 ST Maxx on TRD SEMA 4Runner rims. Alignment shop had my truck for 90 or so minutes and tried alignment 3 to 4 separate times. No rub but it pulls to right and feels floaty. Is this just the feel with bigger tires? (in terms of that floaty sensation) or is my alignment just not great? Any advice on how to fix