Hard to tell from the pic, but after cutting 2 coils out, the ride hgt is perfect to me... but the tires have a bit too much camber.. and it's wearing them unevenly...and the car bump steers. Understandable, given that the swing of the suspension travels in an arch and the front is pretty much bottomed out. I already know that I need to raise the mounting points for the upper control arm bracket, and possibly move them outboard. Not a big deal, but before I go and buy steel, and start making my own relocation mounts, I figured I should probably ask if anyone knows of anyone (or company) that already makes em. Seems like a pretty common issue to run into when you want to static drop more than a coils worth on one of these old mopars, but my quick search didn't turn up much. If nothing exists, no worries, but it cant hurt to ask and possibly save some time! Thanks guys.
There is camber adjustment built into the upper arms outer pivot pins and bushings. Whether it is enough to correct your camber is unknown. However, camber doesn't adversely affect tire wera as much as toe-in. I doubt you can do much about the bump steer with the stock tie rod arrangement. Those Plymouths use a quite short and a very long pair of tie rods that attach to the pitman arm. Changing the location of the steering arms might be a possibility....or raising the pitman arm....to correct the angles of the tie rods. That would help with the bump steer issues. Ray
JUst took my 51 plym off the jack stands 2 nites ago after about 3 weeks of tweeking the the front end to try and remove the bump steer. On mine, I removed a little over 1.5 coils and the bump steer wasn't terrible but after several yrs on the rd, I wanted to try and correct as much as possible.. I decided that flipping the steering arms from drivers side to passengers side would allow me to place the tie rods at a more neutral horizontal position. After a couple days of disassembly, flipping parts and then resetting toe , I was thrilled w/ the outcome. That feeling ended as soon as I went for a test ride. W/ just a little steering input , the car would oversteer like crazy! Im not too sure were it went bad but I ended up returning it to the way they were. So my next attempt to remove the bump steer was to keep the front end from floating over the bumps. If you havnt relocated the front shocks yet ,DO IT! I cant believe that I put that mod off for soo long and now that its done, I cant wait for the next rd trip W/ the way the frnt end used to float , it was like hitting 3 bumps for every one in the rd. now it just hits the bump and sucks it up. 1/8" toe in, relocate the shocks and give it a try. jeff
Thanks all for the advice! Jeff, by relocating the shock, are you talking about moving the top point up above the frame?
yup, what he said I was going to do a thread on it when I did mine but theyre are already a couple good ones posted. A quick search should find some. jeff
The Jalopy Journal
