UFM82

Just rebuilt the front end of my 2001 S-Crew- all new upper and lower control arms, all 4 tie rod ends, idler arm. Only the Pitman arm remained. Took it to have it aligned and without touching anything the caster was sitting at +.4° on the left side and +.7° on the right. Specs for caster on a 4X2 is +5.2° to +7.2° with +6.2° being the preferred setting. With the caster/camber kits installed I can only get to +2.7°. The truck is all over the road as it follows every rut, pavement imperfection and hump. For 180,000 miles it was rock solid and never wore a tire badly. I'm only on my 3rd set of tires at 180K! Since my front end rebuild and alignment it drives like crap and I'm pissed. What can I do to get the almost 4 more degrees of caster this truck needs to drive right?

jstockert

Pretty obvious something was done wrong. Did you do the work or a shop? If a shop did I would take it back and have them figure it out. If you did the work then recheck everything and then take to a shop to fix if you can't.

Red-Ford

I had the same thing happened, I've had a total of 8 alignments in the last two years (some before and some after the lift). All of them the caster was off by .2 to .6 degrees. I talked to the guy the last time I had this happen, and he said that the cast was maxed out with keeping the camber in spec. He said it isn't uncommon to see this. I'm not a big fan of this shop because they have screwed me before (Les Schwab), but I've taken to other places and had the same results (as far as the caster being off, I never talked to them though).


I am personally not too worried about it.

Carcrazygts2

Take it to someone who knows how to align it. Example being the Ford Dealer. I have ran across this issue so many times. Its very easy to get maximum caster and minimum camber on a 2wd.

UFM82

Update- I looked at the suspension today to see if there is anything unusual about it and I see nothing. The upper arms can't be installed wrong, nor can the lower arms. The back upper control arm bushing is in as far as it can go and the front bushing is out as far as it can go, thus achieving all the caster possible. The lower arm has no adjustment that I can see. I can't see how to get more caster out of this thing? Looks like I'm calling a Ford shop tomorrow. Puzzled...

Telewubby

i had 0 caster. Chasing terrible handling for 2 years and 4 alignment shops. The original shop put moog upper control arms on the wrong sides. Once corrected caster went from 0 to 7