Alignment

[thorz]

My friend told me if I were to lower my truck 3/4 using coils and blocks that i would need to take it in to get it aligned right, is this right or should I be fine?

[STOCKFLOWED]

you definitely will have to have it aligned, if you just slap the parts on, you will have mad toe out , your camber should stay close, but the beams from the machine will never lie, its a no brainer, most alignment shops should be able to give you the hookup for around thirty bucks, cheaper than buyin rubber every other month..

[Old Man]

Mad toe out only with drop springs. I'd gather to say the camber is completely screwed and cant be brought back into spec!! When you drop over and inch you lose the ability to adjust the A-arm for the proper camber and lower control arms with less distance between the arm mount and ball joint are needed.

[Sam]

If you say that shorter lower arms are needed, why don't you just tell us where to get those?? ('cause I've never seen them)

[eriks98s10]

when i dropped my truck with coils and spindles, everything was off. As I was driving my truck to the alignment shop, my steering wheel was turned 90 degrees to the left just to go straight, lol. I looked at the before/after printout that the menieke(sp?) gave me, the tow was way off and so was the camber/caster. The tech told me that they couldnt put the caster back to specs, but that they got it as close as possible. No big deal, i had little quicker steering wheel return, so i was like, ah its cool...

[Ron]

I just lowered my truck two weeks ago 4" all around with spindles, coils in front and lowered leaf springs and a 1" block in back, and it drives fine, steering is straight, no pulling to either side. I can take my hands off the wheel and it stays straight. Today I'm taking it to get aligned even though it seems fine because I don't want to take any chances on something being off even a little bit. I took my truck to get aligned 2 days after I lowered it and I was told to put about 100 miles on my truck before getting it aligned.

I would say get your truck aligned any time you take any part of your suspension apart. :cool:

[Old Man]

Most companies dont care if you go out of spec on caster/camber so they dont make them for S trucks. But JDM's ad Western's drop lower control arms use deeper pockets for the coils so the factory's are retained and also move the ball joint location in to correct for such. Also Air Ride Tech makes a new upper arm that moves the upper ball joint out to match the bottom.
3 inches should only be done on the front with a 1 inch coil and spindles so that caster camber can be brought into spec. 2 inch coils put them at or just over there adjusting limit. Anything over 3-4 front should be done with the correct bagging kits that include these new arms. Also over 3 inch rear drop should be reconsidered since even though you can shim a new pinion angle the driveshaft will be too long and also begins to bind since its near flat and even shimmed down it strains the ujoints being near flat.
Most of these companies dont give a rats ass if you ruin parts quicker, there only consideration is to make you happy while they make a profit. Most lowered trucks you see on these boards eat ball joints, ujoints or have shake problems at speed they never get rid off nor do they even really care since it looks COOL. Any decent alignment guy, and there arent many, will tell you not to run such or when caster/camber is too far out will add TOE IN to at least force the tires to run centered to at least save some tire life and not have the steering correct fast straight like Erics does. His tires are pulling back in to the least amount of off pull on there own which says turned I'm eating your outter edge to death.
Very few serious people that end up over 3 inches total front and rear drop also run gauging systems of some sort with bags so that they can when riding be at the proper alignment height and then dont care when parked!

[xdraggerx]

before I bagged my truck it had a 5/6 drop. I got it aligned for 34.99 and it took about 20 minutes. I had a new set of tires on the truck and over the course of a year the wore evenly.
DraggerDave :D