My '60 has been going pretty well over the summer. The A/C works absolutely stupendously and the exhaust note is music to my ears.
Right now I'm fixing issues after the build for the '60. Mostly just minor things but some major.
- Steering wander
- Full turning
- Death Wobble
- Brakes
- Small interior fixes
Steering wander
My steering box is the most common steering box ever made. I researched this and what I say is fact. This came on EVERY Ford truck from 1980 to 1997. I mean EVERY Ford truck, from the Ranger to the F-450. Since I bought my used steering box on E-Bay for $40 I figured it was a gamble. And it definitely was worth that $40 since it had about a 20* dead spot in the center portion. I finally decided to make a move and replace it with a rebuilt one for O'Reilly's.
Next I took it to an alignment shop because I had recently broken my toe, was being sent to Colorado for a few weeks and then was headed to Canuckistan after that.
I took it to a local alignment shop that is pretty good most of the time. One of their techs is a 'wheeler so a 3 link won't confuse him. Somehow there was a mix up and he wasn't able to get to my cruiser, so one of the less skilled techs tried to align my cruiser.
When I got there this guy was scarring up all my links with water pump pliers and adjusting the lower links. I naturally expressed my displeasure of him messing with the lower links (they control the axle placement front to back). I informed him that to adjust caster you have to adjust the upper link only. After arguing with me for about 15 minutes about the suspension that
I DESIGNED AND BUILT, the manager finally came out and apologized refunded my money and gave me a free future alignment.
I went home, built a test fixture to center my axles out of a scrap piece of 2x2x.090 wall tubing and got the axles equal front to back. The dummy at the alignment shop had adjusted my left side a full inch shorter than the right side of my cruiser. I was unimpressed.
The '60 has sat for the last few weeks because of my travelling and my injuries. I finally got to drive it the other day and it was death wobbling so bad I couldn't even keep it on the road. From my reading DW occurs when something is loose, the tires are not perfect (which mine aren't), the toe is off, and the caster angle is too little (<2*) or too great (>7*). In the case of mine, the knuckles were a bit loose, the tires are used and not that good, the toe was 1.25" in and it had 16* of caster. Thanks alignment shop.
DW Fixes
I gave up on the alignment shops, so I built my own test stand to align this. I took no pictures of this because I was in a hurry.
- First I took off the wheels and checked the knuckle preload.
- There was about 5lbs of drag, so I removed .005" of shims from the knuckles, now they are ~ 12-14 lbs
- Next I checked the wheel bearings and added a slight amount of preload to those as well.
- I reassembled everything
- I clamped 2 1x1 angle iron to both drive hubs and marked them level
- I set my alignment to 1/8" toe in using both ends of the leveled angle (18" from center). The alignment shop had me towed in 1.25"!
- I have a camber/caster gauge so I checked the caster while I was at it - it was <8 degrees (which is the highest the gauge goes to). I later took measurements and determined it was at 16*.
- I ended up putting the caster to 5* and the toe to 1/8" toed in.
No more DW.
Full steering
I noticed my drag link hit the track bar bracket and the sway bar links. It was time to borrow from the Super Duty, so I removed the tie rod and put a gull wing bend in it.
I haven't got to the brakes yet, but this will get the Tundra brake upgrade with 13WL calipers and 12.75 x 1.5" rotors.
