Wreck and won't align

Send me a pm

 

Their is some slight mis-information here that needs to be cleared up since this will be here for the next 20 years for people to read and take as 100% fact without knowing all the facts. I'm in the mood to type a novel so grab a tasty beverage and some snacks .... haha

Grant ... you got in an accident and started replacing parts to fix an issue. What were your alignemt specs when you had the truck aligned prior to the accident when all the suspension parts were installed? Was it driving poor prior? This "alignment" issue all stemed after the accident to my knowledge. We had you email us pics of the arms on the truck and everything looked good to the eye. We did recommended you sending your arms into us to check versus buying new arms right away, but you wanted to buy them to speed up the process if you needed them. If you didnt need them you would return them for a full refund which we were fine with. Your passenger side arm was bent slightly. The arm fit our jig, but the ball-joint position was pushed back 3/16-1/4". Thats not something you would see with your eye, but it is something you see when it fits into a jig that isures consistency during welding and manufacturing since you have very specific reference points. So the accident was harsh enough to put some bend into the US 4130 chomoly 1.25" x .120w round tubing. Had you had arms that were built with cheaper DOM tubing or import materials, or stamped sheet metal like the stock arms and some aftermarket they would have bent even more. So what else could have bent/tweak on the truck too?

What I explained to your alignment tech is to put maximum positive caster into the front end and align camber to the factory tolerable specs. If he's seeing numbers way out of spec then their are oustanding issues with the truck unrelated to the new upper arms. Did you use OEM Toyota replacement parts or aftermarket? If aftermarket who's to say they arent 100% built to factory spec and compounding a problem? Every truck aligns slightly different from one another at times, especially on Toyota's because of the engineering they put into their front ends. They build anti-dive geometry into the upper arm pivots so when the ride height it raised you lose caster considerably. Easiest way to explain this is your lower arms are parallel to the ground and your uppers are at an angle that has the front pivot higher than the rear. So when the suspension cycles down the top of the spindle/knuckle moves forward ... losing caster. All our arms have caster correction built into the arm because we know they are going on lifted trucks. So if you compared the stock arm to ours, our ball-joint or uniball is further back, which corrects for the lose of caster. If you had stock upper arms on your truck you would have even less caster.

Justin and myself have talked to you a ton on many occasions offering help at every turn without hesitation. Troubleshooting over the phone or on forums can be difficult. At the end of the day if the truck drives good, has no issues and is aligned with no tire wear, then it is what it is unless you completely disect the truck head to toe and/or make changes to the parts you have. I've seen brand new Tundras stock that wouldnt align to spec, when others would. We're talking right off the showroom floor. Stock trucks arent perfect and arent built to aerospace tolereances. Their is a reason stock parts have oversized holes, slots, rubber bushings, etc. .... because they all dont line up perfect from truck to truck when they're slamming them together on the production line. Imagine the difficulty building tight tolerance parts to fit low tolerance trucks lol.

We build 3 different upper arms for these trucks, our cheaper ball-joint arms, tubular uniball arms and our top of the line billet upper arms. They all have different benefits, features and differences based on what they are going on, how they are being used and what customers want and need. Not to sound cocky but no other company has the amount of aftermarket performance arms out there on the market that we do being used both on and off-road.

Dont take this the wrong way or as an attack, that happens in the context of the internet sometimes. I just wanted to put some info here that sheds some light and will also educate others. If we didnt care about customers and help work through their issues/concerns I wouldnt be here, and I've been here for the last 13 years haha.

Now back to your regular scheduled program ....

- Scott @ Camburg

 

Well Scott thanks for taking the time. The 3/16 is a move but like Justin stated it would only have added more caster and suggested I should put them back on but I opted to replace them so that I could say that everything had been replaced. Everything is factory except for the springs and Camburg control arms. You stated what Darrell said and that is from the factory they can be off. The frame was tested a second time and Darrell was there and looked over everything and told me that this frame may be straighter than factory. I think his point was the frame or anything else being bent is out of the question. But we went through all of this and yet this could be "is what it is"! After talking with you and many other people I found that it was possible that I was chasing my tail. The reason the idea of chasing my tail came up is because it became clear the problem is happening on both sides of the vehicle. The hit wouldn't have had the same effect on the driver side. In fact none just as you saw in you control arm. There were no issues at all. I don't know what the numbers were prior which doesn't help anyone. Not having a known good doesn’t help at all. That said, had I known that it could be "is what it is" would have saved a lot of time (not worried about the money). Darrell said that the way it is aligned it will not wear wrong nor will it drive like a 50's vehicle because of caster. If I add "More Positive" caster than I do now, it would have rub even MORE.


So why in the heck would you want factory number to roll the tires even closer to the firewall? But again, like you said the numbers maybe all it can be, even after replacing a lot of parts we saw NO differences at all. I installed new bushwacker flares which the set I had prior were cut because I got them used. Now they are going to be closer to the tire, this is really what started everything. I feel like the truck drives great and appears to wheel the same as it did before but I will have more rub with the flares. I would like and thought I could move the tire forward to prevent rubbing. I thought this was positive caster but I have learned that negative is forward and is no good.


So, it is true that these numbers can very well be correct for this truck and has nothing to do with the wreck. Every professional person I talked with from my buddy with the body work, Darrel, and many shops like yourself and all the hours spent looking for something to be wrong when it was possible from the get go there was nothing wrong. On a car-o-line machine twice and everything was within spec. Scott, I appreciate all that you and Justin did and offering to look at the original set as well. But why in the Hell would you want 1.5 positive caster to cause even more rubbing problems? (Link below) Why would anyone want to move the dang tire so far to the back with 33’s? I do agree and have learned that negative caster is no good and Darrell explained this to me as well. What I gathered from you above is that this truck may very well align this way because of how it was manufactured. That is my point Scott. The numbers may not look right, but it drives and functions the same as before. The fact that this issue is on both sides doesn’t add up to the wreck in this case. Mechanics, body people, alignment people don’t see anything. I have fought way too much not to find ONE major issue. Not ONE. Even the new control arms the alignment was almost the same as the last time.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AlpsbW0rTIVRjrl_qwEAWPQeL8SL5A
This isn't fully stuffed either...

 

Incorrect. Moving the tire forward at the lower control arm, which is the only way your setup allows, creates POSITIVE caster. This also moves the tire AWAY from rubbing the cab mount/lower fender area.

I've never seen anybody trying to move the tire to the rear for clearance and lower caster.

If the truck drives fine and doesn't wear tires, all is well.

 

This "alignment" issue all stemmed after the accident to my knowledge.



Not exactly, this started because of the rubbing and the poor alignment numbers I was getting. My body man did his job, but the several alignment shops didn't look at the numbers from the machine which would have pointed to the problem. But because an accident was on the table everyone kept telling me something was bent. So, this took me down a long and I mean long road. I have learned a lot and still don't claim to know it all. The REASON I installed the new Camburg arms in September was to keep shops from pointing to another part causing the problem. Also I asked if the old ones were good enough to sell and I was told yes, so to help save on some time that was the road I went down.



So, what else could have bent/tweak on the truck too?



Nothing else was bent. Like I said I had the trunk put on the machine twice and it was well within specs and even the second time we had the alignment shop come by and they too agreed that all was good. But I still was not pleased with the result and I didn't want to have to cut anything nor hammer my fender/body so the tires wouldn't rub. This is when I contacted SPC, nothing against Camburg. In fact, Camburg has great support and worked with me greatly, but they too didn't see the issue in the alignment sheet between July and August when the problem was fixed. You will see that the SAI numbers were 2 degrees off on the right side in July and were almost the same in August. This is when I replace the spindles and lower control arms. SPC believes that based on what they saw they would have said the spindle was the issue. But even though the truck was fixed and wheeled like it did before, I still wanted some way to make it right. To finally resolve the issue that had always been there. I was on the road to move the tire forward in the wheel well and get my alignment numbers.



But to the rest of your statement, some trucks from the factory just will not get into specs when you lift them and add larger tires. SPC assured based on what they knew that their arms would fix my problem and give me the extra adjustment, so I purchased a set. After installing them I was able to achieve 2.6 positive castor. I moved the lower ball joint all the way forward (forward adjustment all the way in and the inner adjustment all the way out) and set caster and camber with the upper ball joint. BOOM, I am all good. The factor adjustments just weren't enough even with Camburg control arms.



In no way am I writing this to say there is anything wrong with Camburg. The problem is that my truck and many others need arms that will provide more adjustment that Camburg cannot provide like SPC can and cheaper. I am not jumping my truck and do not need arms for such conditions, just adjustment and clearance. Again, thank you for your help, but I too don't want this sitting out here 20 years and not being able to help others from going through what I did to get the adjustments they too may need.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AlpsbW0rTIVRjrkKjoqdeUu01SBIPQ

 

Did you sell your bent upper control arms on here?