My final stance.

Yea.. It's been awhile since I been under a car..
I do know that I was going to look at the coils spring top hats and see if I might be able to set them slightly back to help get some positive caster without having to slam the adjustments.

 

thats not very much caster.
with your kit you should be able to get much more caster.
you didnt go through that m2 swap just to have stock alignment angles based on biased ply tires of the time.
seriously you should shoot for at least the 2 degrees caster but you should be able to go with more than that.
on mashoris car, we ended up with 245/45 17s.
they rubbed on the top of the fender and the front valance.
we simply rolled the front fender lip with a baseball bat. we trimmed the front valance. mo used to have a thread that had all the pics in it but hes deleted all of his pics. ill see if i can take some. the end result of the trimmed valance was hard to see the difference.
heres a pic i took Wednesday of his car.

with the air dam you cant see the valance cut but it pretty much is in align with the back edge of the air dam.

 

Exactly. On the reread.. I suppose I should have just said that rather than dissing lazy alignment tech's.

I think you need to start massaging it all into place at this point and I would start by setting wheel location with a bit more aggressive alignment. The car will also be much nicer and safer at higher speeds. Not that you would ever speed very much over the posted limit or anything crazy like that.

 

You prolly won't like that negative caster, it makes the car tend to wander. I put +4.5° in mine with power steering. Manual steering calls for a little less (1.0 to 1.5) but still positive, since you have to "muscle it" at low speeds. Think of it this way: With the top ball-joint not directly above the lower, you are actually lifting the (weight of the) front-end of the car when you turn the wheel. While driving forward with (+) caster, the wheels will snap back straight when you let go because this weight is actually pushing down and the wheels are leading. With (-) caster, the opposite is true. The front wheels will "flop" to whichever side has the most - caster because the wheels are trailing...

 

yep.. it's like a shopping carts front wheels.. only reversed.

It's also good to keep in mind that higher castor settings do indeed wear suspension parts out faster and are tougher on power steering systems too. Not a huge deal until you start racing it around a lot.. but there's always some tradeoff.

You'll also gain front fender edge clearance at hard turn as you push the upper a-arm back towards the rear where it should be. This alone would be worth taking it back to the rack once more.

Also, with a new tighter suspension.. I'd probably shoot for about .2 - .3 max toe in as well. .04 is decent enough but the rule is to try and end up with as close to 0 as possible when you're actually rolling down the road. Your tires will thank you.

 

called Blugene and he talked to my alignment guy and convinced him to add two and a half degrees of caster. right now it wanders too much and doesn't straighten back out when I let go of the steering wheel.

also a picture on concrete while it was waiting for inspection

 

The positive caster still has me thrown off. Seems counterintuitive like wheel should be trailing for it to center itself...

But all documentation on web says positive will stabilize it under motion.

 

Do you need inspections every year?

 

Every year unless i register as antique. Then five years.

Finally convinced the tech to tell the alignment machine it is 78 mustang ll not maverick. He can only adjust to the machines specs and prompts. Mustang ll will give me one degree positive caster

 

Here's another way for you to visualize it since I probably screwed you up with the shopping cart analogy. Imagine the forks of a bicycle. Then imagine what would happen with stress loading of the forks, frame and what happens to high speed stability when you try to ride with the handlebars turned around like a shopping cart.

Castor.. on faster moving vehicles must be arranged in a fashion that it's designed to resist forward movements tendency of "suspension fold under" type forces and reducing potential for "wagging"(the name escapes me now.. but whatever it's called when the shopping cart's trailing wheels flutter back and forth). The forces must be distributed correctly.

Basically, it's harder to control the extreme and dangerous forces being applied in a rearward fashion on our suspensions so they simply "give it a head start" by pointing the suspensions geometry with the lower joint leading the way of the hubs centerline. That way the upper and lower suspension share the load as forces are pushing back and upwards in real driving(like hitting a pothole).

IIRC.. many airplanes have shopping cart style castor in their landing gears too.. but they don;t drive over bumpy surfaces and go around corners for extended periods either. So, even if we could implement a severe negative angles in our cars to mimic a shopping cart.. it would cause premature wear characteristics and require even heavier suspension to deal with the added forces which are trying to tuck and roll our front ends under themselves. Only way to even get close would be to move the engine and driver to the rear so the front wheels unload a bit. That'd be one hell of a ride and you'd probably have to steer with the rear brakes.

Hopefully that helps to finally clear it all up for you. Those adjustments should get you much closer to what you thought you spent some of that cash on. Onwards and upwards, old boy.

 

Noooo.. don't do it.. don't waste you time! I hate those automated setups.

Go somewhere they can give you a custom alignment! +2 degrees or bust. :Handshake

 

Not trying to jack... But daaaarn! That's a nice tight rear bumper he's got there. Wish mine looked like that!

 

groberts...that bicycle fork analogy works better for me! Thanks!

I have wasted two half-days sitting at the alignment shop trying to get this guy to do what I want, and am tired of it. I accepted the stock manual steering setting for the mustang II, just so I had a car that was semi-safe to drive until I could find another more competent guy to do it.

The biggest problem was that the shop owner spoke english, the alignment tech did not. So every time I told him to use Mustang II specs, or to add 3 degrees positive caster, he just freaked out. I also don't think he knew that he could start with Mustang II numbers, then bump up the caster BEFORE getting started on the job, and the machine would have guided him.

So I ended up with .7 positive caster, and it drives much better, but still will not return to center when I let go of the wheel.

I found a guy a couple towns over that confirmed that he could put in the MII numbers, tweak the specs, and set it to what I ask for, so next week or so I will run over there and let him give me a tweak.

 

p.s., Scooper, if you register as an Antique in Texas, you don't have to get an inspection sticker at all. That is how mine is registered.

 

Oh hell! THAT makes a difference...

I thought it was that you only had to do it every 5 years. So in reality, no inspection at all, and you only have to register every 5 years?

OK, doing it. Inspection is always a stressful time for me because this thing is barely street legal. Still can't get the reverse lights to work, and some of the other items are iffy.

Convinced...

But I will hate to lose my vintage 1974 license plates.

Oh well, they can hang in the garage....