I'm replacing everything on the front suspension and steering on a 73 Grabber. One of the changes I'm making is to convert to manual steering. I have the new center link and what I believe to be the correct steering box, idler arm, and pitman arm for a manual steering set up. Oddly, when I put all the parts in place I find that the driver side tire is pointed pretty far left while the passenger side tire points straight. When I point both tires straight (by eyeball) I find that In order to get the left tie rod to line up with the hole in the center link I would have to screw the left tie rod out 1 1/2 inches. Does this sound normal? Are there enough threads to unscrew the tie rod that much? When I measure the distance between the grease zerks on both ends of the tie rods I found the passenger side to be 16" and the drivers side is 16 3/8". On a related matter. Once I have this sorted out can anyone tell me how to do a crude alignment, good enough to get me to a shop?
first you need to center the steering box. turn all the way one way, then counting the turns turn it all the way to the other end. now turn it back half the amount counted. this is the center. see if the key lock for the steering wheel will lock it in this position, if not then tie it down to the seat or something creative to keep it from turning. i have no idea about why the tie rod lengths are so off but if the center link is the correct one then it really is trivial. so with the steering box centered now adjust the camber bolt on the lower control arm so the wheel is standing straight up. you can verify this with a bubble level. now set the toe. first adjust the toe by eye balling down the outer edge of the tire till it looks flat with the rear tire. now you can truly adjust the toe. you can use a tape measure or make a toe stick. i did this with some pvc pipe and 2 hose clamps. i will take the toe stick and put it on the front of the tires as high as possible and locate the hose clamps on the center rib of the tread. then move the stick to the back of the tire and see if its on the center or not. if not then adjust the tie rod sleeves till this is achieved. this will get the alignment close enough to get it to the alignment shop with out tire damage.
Never, full weight of the vehicle should be on suspension... To qualify that, there are published ride height specs and if a vehicle is a little low, adjusting block are supposed to be used to raise it, I don't believe pratice was ever followed in any great degree though
Thanks for the reply! I thought the car had to be on the wheels. All the alignments I have ever seen the car was resting on wheel. Never seen anyone using any blocks in the process as I recall. I have new steering components I will be installing soon and will have to do the same thing to get to align shop.
Yes but.... Thank you for taking the time to post a reply to my question. One thing I failed to mention is that I still need to install the manual steering pitman arm. The body shop had to temporarily replace the manual pitman arm with the old power steering pitman because at the time I still had the power steering center link on the car. The body shop had to make the swap so they could steer the car around the shop. So the question is, once I have the steering wheel centered how can I tell what orientation the manual pitman arm needs to be at to get everything aligned correctly? Sure hope that was clear!
the pitman arm is keyed. i believe it can only go on 4 directions. the correct direction should be obvious.
