put my front end together last night. put the wheels on and they tilt outwards. ive got 4 degrees of positive camber. i must have the spindles on the wrong axle. there the 36 to 41 spindles i thought that was the year axle. anybody have suggestions?
i noticed too the spindles are on backwards that may have something to do with it . i put a dropped 35 axle on my 40 by using a narrowed spring and drawing the wishbone in , and my camber is good using 40 spindles and it turns in a lot shorter radius than a dropped 40 axle . the tie rod is supposed to be behind the axle
Wrong spindle/axle combo. Swapping them from side to side will not fix your problem. Get your self a '37 and up axle. If you were closer, I'd drop one by. r
well i got the spindles backwards to put the dragling in the front due to the spring behind axle. and bending the arms down didnt look like it would work. ive seen cars run them backwards instead of cutting the arms off and using bolt on steering arms
This will cause a problem when steering....the tires won't follow the correct arc going around corners... unless your running no brakes and bend the arms WAY out into the inside of the wheel... you'll need to find a way to get the tie rod in back... try putting a tie rod on and push it around a corner... you'll see the problem
I had the same problem on a used dropped axle. My frame was like yours with the engine in place. I put it up on jack stands under the axle just inside the spring perches. I removed the spindle and put a piece of bar stock in the king pin hole. I used a 2 foot pipe wrench as a lever on the bar stock. A floor jack under the end of the pipe wrench raised the frame. Someone once said that with a long enough lever you can move the earth. I raised the axle 1/8" off of the jack stand so that I could actually watch the axle move as I heated it with a rose bud. You can use heat to "walk" steel. I heated the axle and watched as the weight of the engine and the careful application of heat brought the axle back down the 1/8" to touch the jack stand. I let it cool and checked the angle again. It took about 3 applications to get the axle back to its factory specs. Yes it can be cold bent in a press or a good truck alignment shop can align it with special tools once the car is finished. We used to do it on the early twin I beam Fords. Off the car it is very hard to gauge the amount of bend that you are getting in a shop press. The above way lets you see it as it moves. It's my thinking that the axle was once fitted with Lincoln spindles which do have a different king pin inclination but I really don't know for sure.
Yeah, problem pretty much has to be in the axle ends. And dropped axles are relatively easy to deform (or fix!) since the dropping has necessarily killed off the heat treatment.
Isn't it traditional practice to use round 37-41 spindles on 32- 36 axles to get hydraulic brakes on the earlier 32-36 cars? What am I missing here?
id like to get the right axle beofre i start bendin stuff. i was thinkin about havin it dropped and have them set the kingpins to match the spindles. or bending would be free too! and i guess i need to look into getting tierod behind the axle.
That is what I always thought. My 47 Motors manual shows the king pin inclination angle to be 8* for Fords from 35-47 (the time of it's printing) When I got mine back to 8* all was normal. When in doubt I go with the book. I just went outside and compared what I think is a 35-36 spindle square back with narrow bolt pattern and cross steering arms (no pt nos to ensure the year) to a 37-41 round back spindle (78 pt no). With both of them in the vise it is easy to eyeball them against each other. They sure look the same. Certainly not 4* of difference. You can see 4* with the naked eye. One of the things that ran through my brain was that it could have been used in circle track racing and the axle modified (bent) for better cornering?
Per Tommy: One of the things that ran through my brain was that it could have been used in circle track racing and the axle modified (bent) for better cornering? <!-- / message --> <!-- sig --> The normal setup on most circle track cars I have seen would be higher than normal positive camber on the left front and equal or more negative camber on the right front. I'm inclined to think that someone back in time changed the kingpin inclination to match a different set of spindles as was previously suggested. If you are going to have the axle dropped I'd be asking whoever you plan to have do the work if this can be corrected at the time that they drop the axle. Otherwise I'd be finding out which shop in the area that works on I beam axles. That will usually be the local spring shop or truck shop or combination of both as we have here in Yakima. Maybe one of the axle benders can chime in here and give some insight on what needs to be done. <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
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