Why Your Classic Ford Feels Loose

In the beginning
1966 Comet Falcon Fairlane alignment specs:
Castor min. -1, max +1
perfect would be zero.
Camber min - 1/2 degree max +1 degree
Toe 1/8

The specifications were no different for a Mustang. Note that there were no separate specs for power steering.

So, what were the folks over at Pontiac doing? Especially in the light of the fact that they had what they called at one point a radial tuned suspension. For argument's sake we'll focus on the Pontiac Firebird as other Pontiacs had slightly different specifications.

Camber was often set around -1/2 degree, caster between +5 and +5.5 degrees, and a slight toe-in around 1/16 inch total.

This could be a good rule of thumb starting point for your Classic Ford running radial tires. Although I'm not sure you're going to be able to get to 5 to 5.5 degrees of caster.

Camber performance can be a trade-off. Too much negative camber and the inside of the tires wear more quickly, same thing for positive camber. Zero camber and your tires wear better but you also lose turning grip. The car will feel as I call it skatey. There is a fix for this more on that in a second.

Adding caster improves straight line stability and steering "feel" and improves self centering of the steering system. The tradeoff is greater steering effort at low speed. A good general rule of thumb is to keep Caster around two and a half to three degrees positive caster.

Why did Ford want zero castor? Simply put it was so that the car was easier to steer in parking lots and at low speed.

Toe
On our cars, toe-in helps stability. (In  combo with caster) and can make the car seem less darty. Too much toe will cause faster tire wear. Generally speaking since Ford asked for 1/8 of an inch of toe I would say that with fresh suspension and steering components and a brand new steering box you could probably get away with 1/16th inch of toe on radials.

The Arning/Shelby drop enters the chat.
The Shelby drop addresses some of the handling issues. We have said this before: it is not lowering the car so much as changing the attack angle of the upper control arm. In early Mustang and Falcons they actually changed the upper control arm position to achieve better caster (moving the upper a arm back in the shock tower) and camber (dropping the upper a arm mounts). Lowering the car slightly is a side benefit.

1962 to 1965 Comet, 1960 to 65 falcon, 1965 and 66 Mustang are all harder to align because the lower control arm is static-mounted. Castor and Camber are set with shims between the upper control arm and shock tower. Later cars used in eccentric cam to allow for camber settings without having to use shims and fully threaded strut rods for caster. Most shops today will have no idea how to align those early pre 67 Comets, Falcons and Mustangs as well as pre '66 Fairlanes.

Speaking of shops, it's getting extremely hard to find places that will align classic Fords. Understand that all most all modern alignment machines can have custom settings applied to them. Your bigger problem may be with people not knowing how to align your particular Classic Ford and thus telling you that they can't align your classic car because they don't have the particular program file they need. Or whatever other excuse they make up in order to not work on your car. 

Zero camber to 1/2 degree negative camber. Radials may require more negative camber. Realize with the 1/2 degree or more of negative camber that you will have to keep up with your tire rotations much more frequently.

2 to 3 degrees castor. Remember the more Castor you add the harder it will be to steer without power assist. I honestly think that a lot of the complaints that you hear about power steering on early Fords with the slave cylinder style steering stem from the fact that the alignment had no Caster set into it.

1/16 inch of toe. As I said before, that only applies if all of your components are fresh. With warrant components you may want to go as much as 1/8 inch of toe. Realizing that with 1/8 inch of toe you're going to have to rotate your tires more often. This is why I find that big n' littles kind of suck even though they look cool.

Generally speaking the alignment specs I showed you are your best bet for better handling performance. If you are just driving your car to cruise-ins you may want to consider less caster for parking chores. Realizing that the trade-off will be that the car won't handle quite as tightly as it would with more caster. It's really going to be what you feel like your 90% with the car is.

Episode 299

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