Looking for a great / patient alignment guy

[pOrk]

Need a car aligned a few days before dells automotion show, car has less then 3 inches of ground clearance. I'm not worried about camber as much as toe, willing to pay premium alignment fees to be sure this is done right as I don't want any problems w bump steer. Know anyone?

[wrath]

If you're just going to do toe, do it yourself.

Caster and camber, and toe, have little to do with bump steer. Bump steer on an otherwise stock car is most affected by the location of the balljoints in relation to the center of the tire. Since many cars are inherently poorly designed (or cheaply designed) when people lower them they change the static height steering geometry and then they usually use wheels with different widths and backspacing (offset) as well. It makes a normally decent driving car be irritating every time you go in and out of a driveway.

Sounds like whatever you have has struts (the worst for lowering). I'd just put 1/8" toe on it at static height and deal with it until you get strut plates.

[-stew-]

From what I know about bump steer (at least in the foxbody world) it is caused by the tierods not being parallel with the lower control arms. The cure on a foxbody is a hiemjoint style tie rod end and a stud going into the spindle, then spacers are used bring the tie rod into parallel with the lower control arm.

This is what I learned from reading. I've also read that installing a bumpsteer kit is more complicated than just stacking the washers until you get parallel. Everything I read also told me my car should have had one, but I had no issues with bumpsteer. Just sharing what I know. Or don't know.

I do know caster and camber wont effect/cause bumpsteer.

[pOrk]

Its a torsion system that uses link pins, no struts on this car

[-stew-]

I miss doing alignments...

I'm assuming this is for your bug? Do you know this has steering issues? Or are you assuming/preparing for the worst?

[Haulin' Oates]

If you are able to make the trek to Madison, Accurate Alignment is owned by a guy named Jim and does amazing work. His plates are all in the floor so he wouldn't have to drive the car on to a lift. I know its a drive, but worth mentioning.

[Car Guy]

Justin @ Big Bear in Oconomowoc is a name I remember hearing many great reviews about......

[WickedSix]

with as little travel as a car with 3" ground clearence will have....bumpsteer is going to have very minimal effect on the handling during such a small amount of travel. Stew is correct in that the geometry of the tie rod will induce or reduce bumpsteer. parrallel to the ground thru travel and zero bumpsteer will be induced

[pOrk]

This is for the bug, I'm flipping the tierods when I get it as I'm narrowing the beam 3 inches and welding in adjusters. I thought toe had a direct effect I was readinng a pretty confusing thread on thesamba. I also thought I needed an alignment rack to do an alignment, if not how do you do it without one? If I can get the car to go straight down the road safely without having an alignment done on a rack I'm cool with it, these tires r cheap :)

[-stew-]

I set the caster, camber, and toe by eyeball on my stang. Went down the road great, no ill effects noticed on the tires in 5000 miles or so. I can give a hand when the time comes.

[SSDude]

For the life of me i can't remember the name of the place but Jbiscuit took his ride to a shop in Butler. He was even able to wiat while they did the work and the guy was super cool to work with. Not trying to rush you out the door once they got your money.

[WickedSix]

Eric, bumpsteer is toe-out induced by travel in the suspension. So yes it is toe related. When your suspension travels car manufactures want a certain amount of bumpsteer because it sets the car into understeer condition which is more managable for a novice driver. The same thing is built into military trucks so 18 yo PFCs can't break the rearend loose horsing around offroad. IF you lower your bug what you effectively want to do is find a way to maintain the original geometry. If you are flipping from the top of the knuckle to the bottom that may be enough, but if your tie rod is angled up you will want to decrease toe in because during travel it will cause further toe in and conversely if the tie rod is angle down you can have more static toe-in because as the suspension travels bumpsteer will tend to toe it out. Ultimately it is going to be a balance of bump steer and tire wear because as you toe-in more you create additional friction as you 'plow' the tires forward. And yes 165r15 are cheap I think i use to sell em new for 25 a tire lol

[jbiscuit]

The shop u want to check out is Frame & Axle on roughly 126th and Lisbon just north of Capitol. They take their time and are reasonable. Call though to make sure they'll know how to align an old skool Bug

Frameandaxle.com
262-783-4802

[juicedimpss]

Bumpsteer will be affected by any of the following conditions..
*Change in ride height
*change in front control arm length
*change in rack mounting position(not common with cars with steering boxes/centerlinks)
the only RIGHT way to align the car if any of these conditions are present is to check bumpsteer and make necessary adjustments to correct it.
it is time consuming process,but not overly difficult in most cases.
as others have stated,there are bumpsteer issues on most cars,even with factory ride heights and steering components.

[lilws6]

i used to do some damn good alignments. Until tires plus let me go. i did the alignment on the turbo ls1 moostang. For got his name on here. been awhile since i've seen him since i dont' work in delefield any more

[Bart H]

Justin @ Big Bear in Oconomowoc is a name I remember hearing many great reviews about......

Justin is on his own now at Lake Country Alignment. Only guy I trust with my alignment stuff.

http://www.lakecountryalignment.com/Home_Page_Services.php

[Car Guy]

Yes he is, forgot about that......

[pOrk]

Seems as if the bump steer on these cars has to do with the tierods being mounted to the top of the spindles when dropping them, so I drilled the spindles and found tapered inserts that allows me to flip the tierods to the bottom side of the spindle. Should be almost level now, hopefully this does it. Still waiting on a few more parts hoping the car will make it to the Dells

[HP ADDICT]

Justin is on his own now at Lake Country Alignment. Only guy I trust with my alignment stuff.

http://www.lakecountryalignment.com/Home_Page_Services.php

THIS!! Set up my lowered Z on 20's and did the suspension repair on my trailblazer. Very good guy! Tell him Randy with the black Z sent you. He really takes his time and knows what he's doing! Plus you can watch him do the work and he treats the vehicle with extreme care.