I need alignment advice

[dhayes5]

I have a '72 and have replaced every bushing, bearing, cylinder, caliper, nut/bolt, strut cartridge, spring (Eibachs) etc.

When I bought the car I had a friend who owns a body shop check it over and he said it had never been hit as far as he could tell. Though I guess a previous owner could have hit a serious pot hole. It is also a rust free car.

The problem is that when having an alignment done after doing all this work, it turned out that the front right caster was off quite a bit (I ended up trimming one of the radius rod bushings to take care of this but have not had it checked since) and my rear toe is out (alignment shop said both wheels are pointing slightly left).

When I drive the car it goes straight as an arrow.

The other thing is that I noticed when I hit really rough pavement the car wants to "drive itself" (i.e. I have to fight it through the ruts in the road). I understand that this could be related to caster problems or bump steer. When I put the Eibachs on I did not put in bump steer spacers.

None of the suspension components seemed bent damaged and most everything is new (with the exception of trailing arms etc).

Any suggestions as to where to go from here? Anyone else with a similar experience? I though about a fram shop to let them do some tweaking but I really hate to do that.

[ZmeFly]

there is no alignment for the rear wheels.. unless you get camber adjustments for the car. you can help out the caster problem but tightening your tensiong control rod. this will bring it in some but not a lot if it is really off. remember when doing this it will also toe your car inward on itself. all that the Z car has is toe adjustments. thats it. now your ruff road problem i would say is contributed to the bump stops and your caster being out of adjustment.

[2ManyZs]

You can get the adjustable camber bushing for the rear control arms which will give you the means to adjust the toe setting on the rear.

As far as the front end goes with the wandering problem, some of it will depend on the size and width of the tires you have on the car. You could try to run it a little closer to zero toe if you are running a fairly wide tire. Camber change after installing the lowering springs will also contribute to it. You didn't say anything how your camber was in the front so I'm just guessing here.

[Mike]

You can get custom adjustable suspension components from Arizona Zcar