OME Lift- Honestly- Alignment needed after install?

There was no way I was getting the entire strut assembly off the truck without dropping the LCA all the way down.

 

It's pretty simple really. Out of spec alignment shreds tires. Just think about what's happening when you roll down the interstate out of alignment. The tires are scrubbing inward/outward/sideways etc - in whichever way it's out of alignment. Can you drive the truck with a bad alignment? Absolutely. So in that respect it's not 100% required but when we say shred tires we mean within hundreds of miles, not thousands. Very very significant tire life reduction. So...it would be asinine to drive around out of alignment and lifting is 100% guaranteed to push you out of alignment. With that it's fairly reasonable to say alignment after lift is required because it would be stupid to skip it.

 

Weird never had that problem.

 

Well here's an easy way to explain why you need to.

My lift already done was aligned.

When fitting tires i got another alignment to make sure the caster was up higher. When tires went on still didn't fit properly as I was running about 1.5" of lift cranked the coilover up another half inch giving an additional 1" of lift.

That one extra inch of lift the LCA cam tabs weren't touched at all . Only thing done was tire removed and coilover adjusted. All that made it where my toe was out, camber out by .9 degree and caster out by .6 degree

That might not sound like a lot but that's close to being out of tolerance. And the toe being out in the week between when I got the new alignment was already starting to show uneven wear on my tires.

Wasnt an ome lift but still so you can see how much changing the height can alter it.

 

Align it unless you want to wear out your tires far quicker than normal

 

I'm literally just pulling shit outta my butt here, but would the difference in generations pose any difference specifically relating to this? Possibly due to the 3rd gen being an inch higher in the front, the entire spring and strut assembly is longer, therefore making it more difficult/impossible to remove without dropping the LCA? I'm only assuming you have a 2nd gen based on your info thing. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Ya I'm 2nd gen, It could be a geometry thing, but I've also recently pulled a 2.5" lift out the front end of mine and can't imagine The geometry on a 3rd gen being worse. Now that im thinking I kind of step on my lower to pull the coil/shock out. Some probably dont like doing that.

 

Every mile your drive with your new lift and no alignment, is just killing your tires. Go straight to the dealer post lift!

 

You will want to align the truck right after installing the lift so you can safely drive and not damage your tires.

Your truck will drive caddywhompus until you do. It will be significant and problematic.

I would get an appointment at a reputable 4x4 shop for the day after your lift install. You’ll want someone experienced in aligning lifted trucks so you aren’t paying for multiple subpar alignments.

 

Can i vote this down?

 

Yes alignment. If not it will probably drive squirrely and wear your presumably expensive tires prematurely too.

 

Got lifted with Kings, 2.5" and didnt align. Was "floaty" at highway speeds and felt a bit unstable.

200 miles later installed TC UCAs (likely overkill but whatever) and got an alignment done. Its night and day, drives perfectly straight and feels stock.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E6u7dC7EHg

He might be talking about this....

 

2x here until I got caster >3*, I got 3.8/4.1*

 

So I got an alignment done over the weekend at Firestone and they told me this was the “best” they could get it, within specs for my particular truck (they plug in the make/model/year and the computer tells them what’s spec’d for that particular vehicle)
Visually I can see the camber is off bc the bottom of the front tires are slightly inward, I took it back yesterday and they again set it up on the machine to re-Check and anything was still “within specs”.... he said that they can only align to what is spec’d from factory on the computer, he said that if I had different alignment specs for my particular lift kit than they can tweak it to that.....below are my numbers I’m not well versed in alignment #’s