Front End Alignment Plus!!

[Bo Dillingham]

Hello again,

Some of you already know that I am an old gearhead who regretably had to have another person rebuild the frame on a 65 convertable for me, as I did not have the equipment nor the expertise to do it myself.

Living in Minnesota at the time, I suddenly had the opportunity to move to my hometown in beautiful Upstate New York, so my rebuilder had to slap the car together in time for the move. I had it delivered to a reputable mechanic in Homer, NY with instructions to make sure the alignment was OK.

He happened to have a set of 215/70/R15's on hand, and that is my tire of choice, so he was going to do the alignments with those tires. They are mounted on chrome reverse smoothies (I actually want smoothies, but I prefer the standard offset for suspension, clearance and handling reasons). When he put them on the car, the right front wheel clears the fenders, but just barely. The left front hits the fender by the parking light. (By the way, we found this TODAY, July 19).

The mechanic was speculating that either the fender is on wrong, or the wheel is not centered in the wheelwell. When I got home, I looked in my shop manuals, and though they have some nice pictures and descriptions, they do not address this problem. I looks to me as though the entire front suspension is adjustable using shims (from the shop manual photos).

Can one adjust the centering of the wheel in the wheelwell with shims? or is it a more severe problem?

Naturally, I expect that standard offset rims would help, but I still want to address the basic problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Frame construction and alignments are not my strong suits, and I do not want to be led astray. Even though this mechanic is "Reputable", I just met him, and I have known you at CAC much longer. Tomorrow (Tuesday), I plan to go over there with a tapemeasure, etc. and try to check a few things out for myself, but I'm not even sure I'll know what to look for.

As usual, thank you very much,
Bo Dillingham
607-756-1035 (in case you have a fast answer)

 

[IH2LOSE]

Bo welcome to New York (are you here yet) I am in rockland county new york about 40 minutes north of NYC

Anyway

I assume the body had to come off for the frame repair.Can you take some measurements from frame to body to see if its centered.I would also measure the rims to make sure they are the same offset.

 

[Sting Ray]

Bo, welcome home, you think Homer is Upstate eh? Do you have any pics of the way your A-arm shims are set up now,and your tiedods also that might help, a good thing to look at first is the number of shims on each side, the frame might have been wacked before, and it was shimed out, but might not match the body.



Hope we can get you going again,
Tom

 

[vette]

Check some very simple frame measurments. make sure it is square. then measure the lower ball joints. there will be holes in the frame that are the same from side to side pick one of these holes and go to the center of each ball joint. they should be the same to within plus or minus 1\4 inch. 1\4 inch being the most. If the ball joints are right then the body is wrong. you can not adjust the lower ball joint you can only move the upper for caster and camber.