Rear Alignment at 41 Degrees Toe?

I did some searching on the forums, but no luck with rear alignment issues. I believe its because no one usually has rear alignment problems.

My question - What are the traditional alignment specs for the rear tires? Because it is an axle Im wondering if it is only adjustable by re-adjusting the leaf springs and blocks?

My theory for my truck having 41 degrees of toe on the right rear is that the previous owner may have ran over something on the right side.

There is a door ding on the front passenger door and the alignment on the front right is a little off, but within the range. The rear must have hit or ran over something to throw the alignment and toe off?

Overall I dont believe it is a huge problem, but 41 seems like a high number to have for toe on any tire.

Any suggestions for re-aligning the rear to have better toe settings?

 

I think you mean 0.41 deg, i.e. less than half a degree. Could be a slightly bent wheel, bent bearing flange on the axle housing, or bent driveshaft. Could also be a misdrilled hole in one of the leaf packs. No practical adjustment method. There's a reason solid axle + leaf springs setup has been shunned in passenger cars - it leads to imprecise wheel control.

The front toe can be adjusted to match the rear net "thrust angle". That's about it.

 

Nothing to worry about. If it was 41 degrees you wouldn't be driving it!

 

amazing.

 

Yeah i was like... Who would even put it on the machine with the axle twisted halfway off.

Don't worry and you cant do anything anyway. You could rotate the wheel and retest a few times to see if its the wheel or the drivetrain if you want to diagnose

EDIT

I would assume there machine has .1-.2° of error. I dont think they adjusted an extra tenth of a degree onto the left side of your solid rear axle.

However i think this readout leads to a lot more questions than answers if you compare all the numbers i would have them recheck

left rear camber, right rear toe, front right caster, and camber should be close to - as possible i dont think positive camber is good on our tucks since the camber already gets more positive when the wheel is turned.

 

Wow I am sorry for the lack of knowledge on my part. haha I didnt even think about the .41 vs 41 for some reason. Makes sense now that it isn't a huge offset. I cancelled out the wheel and tire because they have been rotated after the first alignment and the one I posted was the second one.

Thanks for not blowin me out of the water! I appreciate the feedback and info.

I'm guessing my misalignment is from something from the previous owner running into or over something. Ill check underneath to if there is anything obvious and get back to this post to update.

 

The difference will be so small you won't even notice it.

Here is 1 degree. 0.41 is less than half this angle.

 

It is possible it is from when the rear end housing was welded, or the spring perch was installed onto the frame. If it matters that much, they do make thrust alignment spacers to remedy the error.

PK

 

We set our race cars slightly towed in at the rear.

 

.41 degree’s doesn’t necessarily mean .41 degree’s because i’ll be willing to bet the alignment machine wasn’t 100% accurate. They never are. If your truck is driving ok and the tires are wearing ok then your probably ok.

 

I think your tires will tell you if theres a real issue you cant feel while driving it. Just check them for uneven wear periodically. look around the tread. especially toward the inside of the tire. bend down if you have too.

Im from sd too glad to help you out

 

That makes sense that the alignment is fairly off. I guess I glanced at the numbers and assumed they shouldn't be that high.

Ill keep an eye out for wear and rotate them. Thanks again for all the help guys!

 

I'm bringing this thread back from the dead for one reason... My truck (2001 mind you, but still relevant to this) has a -.41 toe angle on the left side and +.20 on the right side. I found this interesting... As, one side will cancel part of the other side out (down to -.21) total. Basically, the truck drives at a slight angle down the road. This I mean in theory because it's so little you can't really tell.

My tech was a little concerned. But then again, he mainly focuses on exotic cars which I'm sure align with the precision of an Xacto knife.

Anyway, it'd be nice if I could correct this with spacers. I did have him set the front to -.8 camber (I drive lots of corners), 1.2 caster and .06 toe. But then again, the front is aligned to the back, so if I decide to fix the back then I have to do the front all over again.

 

bump

found this thread researching to try and align the rear and fix some slight dogtracking/thrust angle due to the toe being off on both sides

one guy says it can help give up to a degree of adjustment to loosen the u-bolts and hit the axle with a deadblow hammer to move it, so I might try that.
besides that will look into shims because currently I don't exactly know what they are or how they work.

edit: ^this might be an answer, may try to enlarge the leaf spring hole and pull the axle with ratchet straps.
Not sure if it helps to compress the leaf packs with vice grips/u-bolts at the same time.