It's a 1964 Valiant convertible, 225, power steering, converted to BBP '73 disk brakes, P205-70R14 tires, all new suspension and HD steering parts, new V8 torsion bars and a new Firm Feel box. I want to go to smaller dia. tires, but not sure what I can find yet.

What settings do you experts recommend? This is a cruiser, not a performance car and it will never be driven hard.

Yes, I tried searching, but the search feature is still not working right for me. I can pull up one page, and then it says no new topics.

The huge thing you want to make sure you do is more positive caster. This will greatly improve freeway stability. Some factory specs even had negative caster for some manual steering vehicles to make it easier to turn the wheel.

With manual or power steering I shoot for 2.5-3 degrees of positive caster. This almost always requres offset bushings or aftermarket UCAs.

I installed offset bushings, so there should be plenty of adjustment.

See here.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Dan, those settings match my FSM, but I keep hearing that radial tires demand different settings for stable handling. Are you a proponent of using only factory settings on a daily driver?

With the old suspension parts and 13" tires, my Valiant was the best handling old Mopar I've ever driven. It tracked down the freeway better than my wife's new 300, while my '66 Coronet and Satellite, and '69 Coronet wandered all over the road with factory settings, as did my son's '65 Satellite and '69 Dart.

That's never been my experience, and there's no reason why it should be so. Remember, though, the negative caster specified with nonpower steering was so grandma would be able to turn the wheel to park the car. It makes for a great deal of wander and hunt.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Thanks for the comments. I'll probably go with the stock settings and if the road test shows the handling to be squirrely, I'll have them play with the caster setting.

The shop owner is in his sixties and claims he's done lots of old Mopars, so he should know what he's doing.

Toe in: 1/16"
Camber: negatve .75 degrees or more agressive 1 degree negative.
Caster: positive 4.5 degrees

If the car will be a daily driver, cut back the camber to 0 through -0.5 degrees. A radial tire will work with more negative camber than the bias ply tires that came on the car without adverse affect.

Sometimes the chassis won't allow so much positive camber. In those cases, take all the positive camber you can get, equal on both sides, and be satisfied.

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You can't fix stupid. - Ron White

2 Darts, check your last paragraph. Did you mean to say "caster"?

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

WOW 4.5 degrees of positive caster?!?! power steering I assume?

FWIW, I was reading the paperwork that came with the new Firm Feel box today, and they specify 4-5 degrees positive caster with tubular control arms and as much as you can get with stock control arms.

Don't go too crazy here. 2-5 deg + caster is usually doable with the offset bushings on stock UCAs. 2-3 deg would work very well.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

The restoration shop took my Valiant to the alignment shop yesterday and as luck would have it, the oldtimer was out sick and a younger tech attempted to align it.

After playing with it for half a day, he told the restoration shop that there was no way he could set it to factory specs and definitely not add more positive caster, but he did his best to come close.

The restoration shop took it back and called me to take a look at it. Visually, it looked like the wheels were at least an inch too far forward, which made the 205-70-14 tires almost hit the forward lip of the wheel well.

From the front, it looked like the rear view of a Volkswagon Microbus with several degrees of positive camber, and the toe-in had to be at least an inch.

Needless to say, the tech didn't know what he was doing, but I'm hoping nothing is installed incorrectly. I used Moog offset bushings and that seems to throw the upper ball joint almost too far forward, but I'm really confused to hear that he couldn't even meet the 1/4* positive caster. It sure looked like a lot more than that!

FWIW, we were only asking for a ballpark alignment to make it driveable. Without a hood, the interior stripped, nothing in the trunk, and tires that are too big, I didn't expect perfection.

Can any alignment experts comment on this mess?

Never a good start to a successful result. The younger tech didn't know what he was doing and now your car is aligned randomly.
You need to do better than hope -- you need someone who knows what the heck he's doing to check all the work done by the tech who didn't know what he was doing and didn't have the decency to say "I'm sorry, this is beyond my knowledge; please bring the car back when the guy is here who knows how to do this."

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Thanks. Yeah, I meant caster. That's what I get for getting up too early (work nights).

I'm doing this with power steering on a 14" steering wheel on a street car. The goals in this set up are improved road feel and increased steering effort. I'll post after I live with the results for a while.

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You can't fix stupid. - Ron White