Well, I got the front spring drop blocks removed and got it raises up an inch or a little more in the front. The toe changed 2 freakin inches with this change!!! I got it back to about 1/8-3/16 toe with the help of my 7 year old son holding a tape measure on one side and using a straight edge across the tire side walls. Does anyone have any really dead on home garage methods for setting toe? One big issue is that the car is so low I have to measure pretty low on the tires. After more examination something will have to change to eliminate the bump steer. It may be a little bitter like this, but as the suspension travels up and down there are nasty changes in toe for sure. I am thinking it is going to take something like Stephan did to make it work but I gotta do some figuring with the car in the air and the tires off so I can do the geometry. On another note I found the tierods had been shortened in a not-to-safe way; they were cut, sleeved and had 4 roll pins drivin through to capture the ends....gonna pull them and have them TIG'ed.
If you're doing home-made wheel alignment like you described, you're setting yourself up for all kinds of weird behavior that will interfere with your diagnosis. Eastwood sells an alignment kit for less than $200 that may help you a lot. Oh, and a question for the gallery-- Although I'm not a fan of 20s on a '50s car, if the overall diameter is the same, how do you conclude the large wheels contribute to bump steer?
My assumption and past experience with large wheels/ thin tires would say poorly... More road noise, worse road feel. I'd assume 20s could very well add weight to the wheel/tire combo combined with lower profile tires adding to both of those. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsprung_mass
Well after a few yrs of driving my rack is in in the right spot. No bump steer here even with the brutal roads we have here. Just kept the tie rods parallel with the control arms Wasn't rocket science in the end.