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Well after a long delay, moving always seems to prolong things, I finaly took my cuda for a spin after rebuilding the front suspension.

As a reminder, I upgraded to poly bushings, Moog offset uppers, 1inch t-bars, reinforced K-frame, heavy duty tie rods, solid tie rod sleves, and fast ratio pitman and idler arm, nothing to fancy.

SO my first impresions are, 1 - I need better shocks, the ride is a bit rough, but what can you expect with monroe / Napa shocks.

2 - I am surprised at how hard it is to turn, granted I am running stadard steering and a tuff wheel...but it seems a lot of effort is required to turn at any speed...I think I will move back to the standard 2 spoke wheel for now, and then move to power steering over the winter.

3 - even though the wheels look to be staight when the steering wheel is centered, the car wants to turn left going down the road.

I still need to get an alignment, I eyballed it for now. so I am hopefull that will help with at least the effort required for turning.

Jason

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Did I read that correctly that you are running a fast ratio pitman arm and manual steering? If so, yes the steering will be very very very very heavy.

Alignment also affects steering effort once underway.

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Well after a long delay, moving always seems to prolong things, I finaly took my cuda for a spin after rebuilding the front suspension.

As a reminder, I upgraded to poly bushings, Moog offset uppers, 1inch t-bars, reinforced K-frame, heavy duty tie rods, solid tie rod sleves, and fast ratio pitman and idler arm, nothing to fancy.

SO my first impresions are, 1 - I need better shocks, the ride is a bit rough, but what can you expect with monroe / Napa shocks.

2 - I am surprised at how hard it is to turn, granted I am running stadard steering and a tuff wheel...but it seems a lot of effort is required to turn at any speed...I think I will move back to the standard 2 spoke wheel for now, and then move to power steering over the winter.

3 - even though the wheels look to be staight when the steering wheel is centered, the car wants to turn left going down the road.

I still need to get an alignment, I eyballed it for now. so I am hopefull that will help with at least the effort required for turning.

Jason

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Did I read that correctly that you are running a fast ratio pitman arm and manual steering? If so, yes the steering will be very very very very heavy.

Alignment also affects steering effort once underway.

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Well i think i spoke too soon, after putting close to 100 miles on the car, I must say I am fairly happy with the ride of the 1 inch t-bars and polly bushings. It is firm but not overly harsh. I can not say the sam about the rear suspension....that is next on the list.

Most importantly, the wife even theough that it rode better then last year...so that is cool.

Now, that beign said, I have not got the sway bar installed yet, and I did not push it around any corners due to the effort of the manual steering, and I am not to happy with the alignment, just does not feel right.

The car pulls to the right, and seems to have a bit of a soft spot or dead spot when the wheel is centered...and that is after I adjusted the play out of steering box.

Just for fun, here are the alignment specs...

Caster DR - 3.3 PS -2.3

Camber DR +.15 PS 0

Toe DR -.12 PS -.08

All in all , I think my greatest need, is to switch to power steering.

Jason

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Jason -- you need... REALLLLYY NEEEDD... to change your alignment specs. You want POSITIVE CASTER.. and NEGATIVE CAMBER. For TOE, for general daily driving, about ZERO or maybe ~1/16" TOE-IN.... FOR AUTOCROSS COMPETITION, consider TOE-OUT between ~1/16"--1/8".

In order to get the POS Caster with a little NEG Camber, you'll need to either (1) simply change the upper control arm bushings to the MOOG Problem Solvers and reverse their locations, or (2) change the upper control arms to your choice of aftermarket UCA (Firm Feel, Hotchkis, etc).

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Hey Mitch,

I have the Moog Problem Solvers and they are installed in reverse.

I wonder if he wrote down the sepcs wrong. They are hand written, the camber value has a + next to is and all other have a - next to them, so I assume the caster is negative.

I think what you are saying is that I got hosed on the alignment.

I took it to the muscle car guy in town and asked if he used updated specs for the radial tires, he said yep....guess not.

Jason

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With that much negative caster, I would expect steering to be very easy and also the car would tend to wander around. Not stable.

If specs are reversed and it is 3 degrees positive caster, that is a lot for manual steering. Steering would be heavy. Problem solvers could get you to 3 degrees positive. If you back off to 1 degree or less positive caster and dial in some negative camber (around -.5 deg), it should steer easier/better. I'd try first to get alignment set with all parts as installed. You may well get there without changing anything except alignment cam settings.

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Interesting...the sterring effort while driving is not easy by any means...it takes a lot of effor to turn a corner at slow speeds. The car does not wander while going down the highway at 70MPH, but it does pull to the right quite a bit (you certainly do not want to take your hands off the wheel, therfore, sterring the right, feels a bit lose (coming back left there seems to be a bit of a dead spot.

Let me put it this way, there is no way I want to bomb it into a corner the way it feels, because I have no idea what will happen.

I already have teh problem solvers installed.

Thanks for all the input guys, I am not sure I want to take it back to the same guy, I think he had his cahnce, told me he knew his stuff, and I am not so sure at this point.

I think I will take it to my regular alignment place (for the daily drivers) and ask him to put in the specs I have seen listed on the sight.

Jason

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So to be clear, we aren't 100% on the caster numbers, are negative or positive, the camber is zero one side, and .15d? positive other side, and you have a total of .2" toe in?

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ummm yep...in short