Dealer Service Dept problem or mine?

[OregonLC]

How much rake is on the vehicle? If it's less that 1" the there's not much anyone can do, the truck will not behave well if she's flat. id say 1-1/4" to 1-1/2" is actually ideal. And with OE UCA's there's only so much camber they can do on a 2" lift. I would not expect a dealer to catch either, other than to shrug their shoulders and point to what the book and printout says. YMMV.

Edit: just realized you're in SEA. Goto Schwab, preferably one out of the city that sees more off road vehicles. $50 and you'll be done with it. And no service writer/manager between you and the tech.

 

[Muddy Bean]

And this may be totally irrelevant, but wanted to throw it out there. Many times an alignment is done in such a way as to purposefully add a minute amount of drift to the right. My alignment shop said this was to help prevent head on collisions if the driver were to ever fall asleep at the wheel. Add in the road crown and ever single freshly aligned vehicle I've driven has drifted to the right. Just food for thought from your local dummy

Sent from my iPhone. Clumsy fingers may contribute to mistakes.

 

[oftpiste]

More interesting considerations above. Intentional pull? Good to know they're protecting us from ourselves!

How can I specifically measure the rake? It looks like it has some rake? I bought the truck with the OME lift installed about a year earlier (could be 1.5" or 2") and neither the seller nor the installer could tell me specifically which kit it was. Haven't tried asking OME. maybe they have a record.

Another specific request of mine when I took the truck in was to check suspension components and bushings for damage or wear and they claimed everything was in fine trim.

Is there a set of alignment specs out ther that enthusiasts refer to to compensate for lift etc.?

 

[OregonLC]

Measure center of hub to fender lip, front and rear. Left/right should be +0/-1/4" on the DS. Front should be 1"-1-1/2" lower than rear. Adjust with 30mm nut on torsion bar, drive, re-measure.

Toe on a lifted truck should be set at the maximum recommended value for straight line stability first then the tech can tweak to fine tune specific behavior.

I you have stock UCA your camber adjustment will probably max before you hit factory limits on a 2" or greater lift.

If the UCA/LCA/rack bushings are worn then you're going to get some degree of pull/wander no matter how good the alignment. With a full-time 4WD, the suspension WILL move fore/aft under braking and power. Amount of movement is dependent upon wear.

If you wrench yourself the cost to remedy is in the $100's, if you hire it done it may be in the $1000's. Just depends on how badly you want it to track true and how much the tech thinks he can remedy with stiffer bushings.

With my TC UCAs and 96k on the clock I still have to apply a nominal amount of correction even with a fresh alignment.

 

[oftpiste]

update

Went back and asked for an alignment check as I couldn't leave the car for the day. They were cooperative. First they cross-rotated the tires claiming tire conicity and told me it was corrected. I drove it and there really was no change so they re-did the alignment and made a few corrections to compensate for the pull. This made it much better. There was no charge and I was out of there in a couple of hours

Interestingly enough, the 'before' specs on the second alignment didn't match a number of the 'actual' specs on the first which is puzzling. Maybe they didn't actually do the alignment the first time? Or maybe they did it wrong? I certainly hadn't been anywhere that would have radically altered anything so find it puzzling. Printouts attached.

 

[oftpiste]

finally got around to measuring rake. Looks like I have just s smidgen under 1.5 inch difference front to back.

 

[OregonLC]

That should be enough then...