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1964 Nova Wagon “Plank”

Nova
So these cars never came with much caster. If I'm to believe the first alignment shop this went to, they said it was running negative caster. On stock suspension, most shoot for 1-1.5* positive. For the setup it has now I'm told 2* is good for manual steering. Power assist can get away with 3-4*. It can be a bitch to turn even at lower degrees, especially with the wider tires, but manageable.

Tires have about 4-5k miles on them. In good shape though these alignment screw-ups have scuffed them up a lot.

Today I switched out the center link as the '67 seems to have been updated from whatever year I had. It is tucked up higher and looks to move on a better plane. '67 is on the right. Pictures...

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This was all in the name of getting the tierods up higher and closer to parallel with the LCA. It will always be shitty since the pivots aren't in line and they aren't parallel.

Also grabbed some alignment shims. I have 3/8" behind the front arm bolts in an effort to add a bunch of caster, quickly, to test the theory everything is wrong because it needs more positive caster. BookFace isn't much help and Nova people kinda suck, but I'm willing to try.

Driver side will be Tuesday. The camber will probably be wrong now but good enough for a test once I shim the driver side.

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The caster angles of those old cars was pretty bad but it had to be with manual steering still being pretty common. When I first got my 71 Monte Carlo it was pretty sketchy to drive on the freeway with the factory spec settings. I had the alignment shop set the caster as far as they could get it which got me maybe1.5 degrees total. It helped some. I've since replaced all the stock suspension with aftermarket and now have about 4.5-5 degrees and it's now really stable at speed.
 
Drove good today, as far as the alignment goes. Theres some other stuff that needs sorted but that's to be expected.

The tierods look great. I noticed A LOT less toe in when picking up the car and drooping the suspension. That center link helped get them closer to parallel with the LCA.

The camber and toe are wrong. That's because the UCA was pushed out. Also, because the shims push to UCA outward, the spring looks to be rubbing on the cover. I pulled everything back apart today. I had planned to slot the mounting holes of the UCA, to move it rearward...increasing caster without shims. Moving them rearward 1/4" would help a lot to gain caster without making the wheel get closer to the fender fang. But...

The arms are held to the cross shafts with machine thread bolts. Those bolts only have about 3/8-7/16" of threaded connection. Slotting would take away some of those threads. (One mounting hole per arm) So I'm back to square one except the whole damn thing is apart now :doah: :cry:

Picture. Assembled is in the foreground...on the ground.

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And I got pokey with a screwdriver :(
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Church Boys Racing
Drop the pivot so gain caster in the turn.
Moved balljoint back 1/2"

$800 :zombie8:
But that's the way to go if keeping factory frame & aprons.

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