so today i looked at the car, i started measuring the heights of the steering arms. i had spent a lot of time on the bump steer to get it to stay still or toe in a little. having changed the caster as recomended, the bump steer was way out of adjustment due to the steering arms raising at the spindle (front steer) as the caster was increased, so that exercise will have to be performed again.
i noted that the rack knuckles were at different heights, this appeared to position the drivers side knuckle slightly lower than the steering arm ball joint, the passenger side was the opposite with the knuckle slightly higher than the steering arm ball joint. this would cause the drivers side to go toe in on a small undulation and the passenger side to go toe out on a similar bump, this meant that my steering was turning depending on how large the undulations in the road were (like truck rutts on a freeway)
however under acceleration the front would lift to a point where both steering arms would droop, toeing in.
i remeasured the lca inner pivots to the ground and as expected the passinger side was higher than the drivers side, almost exactly the same amount as the knuckles.
looking at the car infront of my roller shutter the rear of the car was down on the drivers side where it came to rest after a long drive saturday and considering my body weight (208 lbs ) was not in the seat, it would probably be down even more when driving.
this would affect the chassis height even more on the passenger side front, compounding the steering arm angle problem, so i will have to address this before any other faults are detected
i will have to add 200 lbs to the drivers side seat and footwell, readjust the coil over on the drivers side, this would have shown itself if i had some corner scales.
by jacking up the drivers side rear until the car was level in the back, the front pivot points all came in line
this must have been playing havoc with the bump steer.
this all goes back to when i found the coil overs damping rate was stiff on one side and soft on the other.
the plot continues, will our intrepid builder ever find the actual problem? stay tuned for the next episode " how many turns on the spring seat will level the car" comming to locostusa soon.
_________________ this story shall the good man teach his son, and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the end of the world. but we in it shall be remembered.
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