Camber Adjustment

[david85]

Thanks david for the info ,

but to me being a degree to a degree and a half in the positive direction of camber isn’t really that bad and with everything he has replaced it will eventually wear- in and sag some, (just need to rotate tires sooner ) for alignment “toe” is really what matters.
I really wouldnt sweat it , not worth the risk of trying to get it perfect

“set the toe and let it go”

I agree it's not worth the effort but still would have been interesting to try and see if it made a difference. I ended up leaving mine alone with roughly 0.75-1 degree of positive camber.

Although even setting toe can be tricky due to the cantilever/camber phenomenon I mentioned earlier. So I always made the adjustment, rolled the truck back & fourth (by hand, if possible), then took measurements. It was a time consuming process but I never had any tire wear issues and the truck always tracked straight as an arrow. Tire wear was excellent, but I generally stayed with highway ribbed tires.

The only complaint was poor return to center due to friction in the steering knuckle thrust bushings. On the other hand, if I had more than 1000lbs in the bed, with some of that weight going to the front wheels, the truck was an absolute dream to drive with wonderful lane tracking and return to center. Ford is notorious for putting too little caster angle on their F250s, so that doesn't help. You can get offset radius arm bushings, but they typically can only add another 0.5 of caster, which won't make much difference (even modern F250s with coil sprung D60 front ends have too little caster from factory).

I've since swapped to a Dana60 front end (94-up variant), but I haven't been able to road test for comparison yet.

 

[FrozenMerc]

It can be done. The trick is finding an alignment shop that has the tools. The picture below is of the tool typically used on vehicle to increase the camber. It's down fall is that it will not always reduce camber since the jack has to be moved to the inside end and the cross member can get in the way. To reduce chamber, you may have to take the beam out of the truck and bend it the other direction. You may want to look at either hot rod shops or heavy truck shops. Places that regularity deal with I-Beam steer axles.

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Hot Rod shops typically drop old Ford I-Beams. Tweaking the camber on a Twin I-Beam would be a piece of cake.

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Heavy Truck shops routinely tweak single I-Beam Axles using this setup. Not sure if it will fit on a Twin I-Beam.

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[u2slow]

Something as simple as changing the wheel backspacing will affect camber slightly too... makes the total lever arm longer or shorter accordingly.

Later arms are specifically marked "DO NOT BEND".

 

[Dummy99]

Finally got the truck back and I got pictures of the front axle and alignment sheet.

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Had trouble getting the images in the post all of the pictures shown are what I have.

Are those specs acceptable or do I need to go to another shop to have it redone? Again I have new shocks, coils, axle pivot bushings, and radius arm bushings. It seems like there really isn't anything else I can do outside of those caster bushings.

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[franklin2]

Does it drive ok? I see the caster is off a little side to side, that might make it want to pull to one side or the other. If it drives ok, I would let it go and keep and eye on the tire wear on the right side. You may find if you get a little uneven wear you can rotate the tire to the other front and get more mileage out of the tires that way.

Not sure what caster bushings you are talking about. All that talk in the previous posts will not fit your truck, like was mentioned you have old school king pins, there is no adjustment unless you take it to get the axle bent.

 

[u2slow]

Whats the condition of the radius 'arms' where they connect to the beam? I could imagine if the holes were wallowed out, that the caster ends up however you position it when you tighten up the bolts.

Another thought... is the caster built into the arm? and are they correct right and left arms? (I haven't the direct experience with kingpin beams).

 

[Dummy99]

The truck drives fine only time I notice any pulling is taking turn on the interstate but that might be cause I removed the sway bars. I’ll take a picture where the radius arms connect to the axle.


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[franklin2]

The truck drives fine only time I notice any pulling is taking turn on the interstate but that might be cause I removed the sway bars. I’ll take a picture where the radius arms connect to the axle.


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I would drive it. You don't have much choice. I hear it's hard to find a shop setup to bend the axle.

 

[Dummy99]

I would drive it. You don't have much choice. I hear it's hard to find a shop setup to bend the axle.

Yeah that's what I've settled with. Its gonna be what its gonna be until I do an axle swap.

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Not too sure what you wanted to see with the radius arms but here's some pics.

 

[79jasper]

Usually a big truck shop will be set up better for this type of axle.

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[u2slow]

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Not too sure what you wanted to see with the radius arms but here's some pics.

No, not much to see... its more of an experiment to see if the vertical thru-bolt hole (or bolt shank) at the beam is sloppy enough that you could loosen it, torque the beam clockwise or counterclockwise (i.e. pipe wrench or similar) for more favourable caster and tighten it again.

The other thought... say the arms are supposed to be mirror images (for correct caster), but you had two lefts or two rights, that could help explain the opposing caster reading on the alignment sheet.

 

[david85]

I haven't seen that type of radius arm bracket before.

 

[Dummy99]

I haven't seen that type of radius arm bracket before.

The truck is lifted. I never said that before because I didn’t want people to focus on **** talkin lifting a 2wd. Probably also why my alignment will never be right.

I would like to do a 4x4 swap one day but I need to do a lot more research on that.


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[u2slow]

The exact height/distance of the radius arm bracket off the frame affects the angle of the arm, and thus the caster.

A little caster difference wouldn't bother me, but one negative and the other positive seems concerning. Your seat-of-pants driving experience should answer that.

 

[david85]

Caster will affect how well the truck returns to center when exiting a turn. It literally tries to lift the truck slightly, whenever the wheels are turned away from straight ahead, so gravity is what helps to bring the truck back to a straight line. Lane tracking performance will also be affected by this.

If the lift kit designer did his homework, all of this should have been accounted for.

In theory, you could shorten your springs slightly. It would fix the camber and add more caster at the same time (this assumes the beams have not already been bent, or otherwise modified), due to how the suspension cycles.

Do you know where the lift kit came from? I won't give you chit, but a lift kit is a pretty significant detail to solving the puzzle.

EDIT: I may have found the kit: https://superlift.com/product-detail/K571