did some measuring on the car today and the factory 8 inch housing is 1/2" offset to the passenger side... the frame is staight... and the ride height is a full 1" lower on the drivers side... any ideas why this would be?
im quessing spring sag seeing as the car has had no previous accidents... guess its time for springs... i have an 8.8 almost ready to go in but i think ill be squeezing it close with the rear that far off set
ok moved the car to a level surface (probably should have noticed that first)... ride height is equal... however rear axle is still offset to the passenger side by 1/2"
The rear in my sons car is offset to the drivers side. Seems to be quite common in these cars. Just setup the springpads on your 8.8 to compensate for it.
A half inch difference is really only a qtr inch offset. If you get it to move in 1/4 on one side it moves out 1/4 on the other side. I too have seen many of them off that much.
When the car was rolling down the line...the guy on the lefthand side of the car can't see what the guy on the righthand side is looking at. Gotta remember plastic was still a new thing back when these cars were made. They came a long ways in the way a car is put together. Back in the day a 1/4" was good enough to nail down
Look at all the cars in the photo albums, and try to determine how many are leaning to the left. MANY of them do. I don't believe is is a spring issue. I swapped in new front and rear springs, and guess what? Still leans to the left. I had to cut the left spring a touch more than the right, and on the rear, I put a 1/2" drop on one side to bring it level. At one point, I had a 150 kid sit on the side of my car to see if it would level out, and it was still leaning to the left. I tried all the right stuff, but ended up having to physically force it to sit up straight.
Ahh you really cant say that, gotta remember its a 40 year old car and they just didnt have the technology to maintain the tolerencing that we do today. You should see some of the tolerencing they did for aircraft in the 60's 70's and 80's it would make you afraid any time you see a plane flying overhead....Trust me every now and then we build replacement systems for the KC135's and the KC10(based on the DC10..and the scary part is Mcdonald Douglas has been gone for about 15 years..whats really scary is the DC10 hasnt been built since 1989)
Uh, yes they did. But the 1/4" offset of the rear axle wasn't a priority to implement tighter tolerances there. I can think of any number of close toleranced devices built even longer ago than that, that would amaze you today when you took it apart. And stufff like this was built to last for 100 years, instead of the "throw away" crap made today. A 1/4" offset isn't a problem in a Mav or Comet until you max out rear tire diameters and widths in the wheelwells. My Comet's axle isn't perfectly centered, just as my 89 Ranger wasn't either. Nor was my 68 Merc Monterey.
Oh trust me... there is a big difference between an assembly line tolerencing of the 70's and an artisan hand made watch or rifle crafted over 100 years ago and each peice is hand fitted to mesh perfectly with each other. With the comparison you made you might as well be comparing the ceiling of the sistene chapel to the obscene words spray painted on the side of a union pacific locomotive.. Granted yeah they can both be generally considered art of one form or another but the big difference between an artists work and a tagger with a spray paint can. And on the other hand there is also a big difference in time too one was done in months or years and one is done in minuites.
See, you're making an issue of something that's not. You stated that the technology wasn't there in the 60's and 70's to tighten tolerances. It was there, but it wasn't a priority to do so for these cars. Big difference. It was simply a monentary decision on the part of management not to do so, because it simply wasn't important.
