So fromwhat ive heard ya just measure the front and the back of the tire and make sure the tow in is 1/4 inch. is that all i have to do to get it aligned???? just lossen the clips on ethier end of the drag link and twist it with some vise grips til the tow in is a 1/4" ??? is there anything else i should know???
Makes sense just based on geometry, but then if you wanted to double the toe in you'd have to have double size tires - that would be 58" tires for a Cruiser! There might be some other reason to have more toe in with larger tires that's not linearly proportional, I don't know. May as well go for 1/4" and see how it feels driving.
If your symptom is mostly pulling to one side, check to see if any of your brakes are dragging, including the rear brakes - I had a rear brake pulling me to one side for a while - took me forever to figure that one out...good luck!
on either side of the tie rod there are TRE's(tie rod ends) i was trying to figure out if i have to pull one and twist either IN or OUT because the truck is pulling to the left. but then i was thinking if i just loosin the clips that hold the TRE's tight on the tie rod and twist the tie rod til the tow in is correct i would be fine. Which would have me changing the lengh of the drag link to compinsate for the change in TOW IN.
I don't think you can have a left or right TRE out.....can you? the truck should track in the middle of the toe in....
If you pull just the left side in 1/2" when you drive, essentially both tires will be towed in 1/4". The steering wheel might be off center but I don't think you have a right to left issue....
I would check for other things like bearings, worn TRE or brakes....
tres are all new..bearings now there is an idea my left knuckle is leaking. so that might be it. all i know how to do to check that is to jack the wheel up in the air and check for slop. any other ideas?
To change the toe, loosen both clamps and rotate the tie rod. I would use 1/8 inch toe IN as this has worked well for me.
If your truck wants to turn left all the time, get the caster checked, as if it is too low or negative, your truck will tend to follow the crown of the road which usually means turning left.
If just the steering wheel is turned to the left, you need to adjust the length of your drag link. It adjusts the same way as the tie rod.
If it turns left under braking-your problem will be in the brakes, not the steering.
One last thing, you can't adjust the toe or caster independenty. ie no way to change the toe of only one wheel. If I had to bet-your caster is wrong since you did do a homemade SOA with lots of oppurtunity to set caster incorrectly. Don't take offense, I would have done the same or worse if I did my own SOA.
One really last thing-swap your front tires side to side and see if your situation changes, if it does, it's your tires.
hmmm, Well I set the caster for the stock set up. But ill try everything and if it doesnt work ill check the caster agian. thanks for some more ideas...on what it could be.
*side note. it did this before the spring over. I think it might be the wheel bearings. but it could be almost anything.
Cruiserdrew finally got the right info. NO, you can't set the toe-in for just one tire. And you adjust it with the tie rod, not the draglink. You want about 1/8" of toe-in, maybe just a tiny bit more if you're running bigger tires.
Ya the more I thought about it the more it made sense. go figure? haha, anyway it tracks better than when I got a shop to do it. That and I fixed my steering wheel so its no 30deg. off.
dude it was way easy to just loosin the clip on the drag link and turn it with c-channels and watch til the wheel was striaght. took all of 2 mins. haha id be afriad of pulling the wheel off while im driving..
After I did my OME lift my steering wheel was crooked. I fought with that stupid draglink, stupid rust in the threads. 3 tries and it still wasn't straight on the road. So I turned the wheel.
I guarantee you I can have my steering wheel off and reinstalled in under a minute. All you need is a 19mm socket wrench. Pull the horn fuse first, tho.
