Had fun at work Friday

[Stretch]

Some days I really enjoy my job and Friday was one of those days. This car came in fresh from the body shop for its first alignment since restoration. It is a ’69 with a 351 Windsor stroker, trick flow heads, a healthy “Potato cam”, an eddy intake and a demon carb. It has Jet hot coated headers and flow master mufflers. Too bad she is still warring 4 wheels of drums. The customer told me to align it and drive it, “Put some miles on her. I want it right!”

She is healthy and winds up fast. The brakes leave A LOT to be desired.

 

[mopar_man]

Even has A/C. That's pretty cool. Is he planning on getting rid of the drums?

 

[Stretch]

I don't know if he is or isn't. He was talking about having new wheel cylinders for the front so I would guess not.

 

[BootHead]

ever line one up with sandbags equaling weight of the driver on the front left floor? It was a "what if" in skoo

BTW nice rims

 

[Stretch]

If the primary driver is a large person I will have him or her sit in the car while I align it.

Only when that driver is extremely large or complains about a pull when they are driving it that isn’t there when I test drive it

 

[beeper*71]

It's a nice change from the same old late models when something like that rolls into the shop. We currently have an F-body Super Coupe at work getting a custom exhaust and last week there was a 69 Cougar for the same.
A local collector brings all his classics to me for alignment and exhaust work and sends his buddies also, when you do good work the word gets out.

 

[J.C. Corbett]

Hey Stretch, I'd be interested in sneaking a peek at the final alignment sheet on that car, because I still need to have my Mach aligned, and no one in this area is very specialized, so I like to have some good numbers for them to use as a baseline (besides Y/M/M).
:bravo:

 

[a12bee]

Love the 69-70 mudstains. Should'a scraped off the mustang script tho.

 

[Stretch]

I basically set the camber at 0.1 degrees positive on the left and the right and put in as much positive caster as I could while keeping the camber. The caster was at .7 degrees positive on the left and right. I set the toe at 1/16 of an inch positive (in) and it drives real nice.

I don’t have specs on these old cars and that kind of goes out the window with radial tires anyway. I try and keep the camber close to straight up or 0.0 and just get as much positive caster as I can. If it pulls to the right I add a little (+) caster to the right side. Usually a half degree of split (more on the right) will compensate for road crown. Caster is the best angle to play with a pull on because it will not wear tires. You can add positive camber to the left side to compensate for a pull to the right but camber will wear tires if you go too far with it.