The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop Front suspension problem

Put an 82 c10 front suspension under my 61 apache 10 truck, the camber is all out of wack.Now I can't get the front end aligned. Took everything apart and replaced upper & lower control arm bushings, ball joints, tierods everything except the center link has been replaced with new. Any ideas?

That camber and caster adjustment on that frontend is pretty basic, using shims of assorted thicknesses to make the adjustments. The number/thicknes and location of the shims is dependant on ride hight, which is measured from the jounce bumper base to the edge of the spring pocket horn on the crossmember. I don't have the chart handy that tells the specifications, but any compentant alignment mechanic should be able to set it for you. To get you to the shop without destroying your tires, you can install shims to get the tires roughly verticle. Install the same number of shims frnt and rear, no need to worry about the caster, that'll get corrected during the alignment process. You can get shims pretty cheap at the flaps.

Yeah the problem is there are so many shims already on the front end that there is 1/8 of an inch or less of threads left on bolts. One side is -4.08 camber and the other is -3.28 camber. The 61 truck was straight and drivable before the swap and so was the 82 donor truck. All we added were drop spindles. frame width is the same, nothing about the cross member was modified except for adding holes to mount cross member. were able to line up with most of the factory mounting holes.

Sounds like you may need to install longer bolts and maybe make up some spacer blocks

Is that a safe & effective fix, seems like that would put a lot of stress on the bolts and cause them to need much more frequent maintenance. How would you know how much longer the bolts need to be, and what thickness the spacers would need to be?

Moog used to have offset upper control arm shafts. You might check with a CarQuest store to see if that is available for that model.

100% agreement with Wrenchbender. The offset shafts are part #K6184. 4 degrees of camber is quite a bit for a street vehicle, almost sounds like something may be bent. If the offset shafts do not allow the camber to set correctly, i wouls strongly advise contacting the company that the drop spindles came from for a warrantee issue. They may not have cast/forged them correctly.

Thanks for the help, very much appreciated. Now I at least have some rabbits to chase. Wouldn't know what to do without this site!