HI,
My father in law gave me his 93 E250. I took it in for an alignment and noticed that the camber kit did not repair the negative camber setting. I know the van was involved in a minor accident. My question is should i belive the alignment shop telling me that an auto body shop needs to pull my chassis towards the passenger side, or should i replace the control arms. in my opinion the van was aligned better before than from what it is now with the only difference that the steering wheel stopped shaking after the alignment.

The van pulls towards the left pretty hard. This causing the van hard to keep under control. I have replaced the upper and lower ball joint on the drivers side and the outer tie rods on both wheels. I am open to opinions and suggestions. Thanks everyone

 

If the accident was minor then it really should'nt require replacing these parts. Who was the alignment shop? Did they tell you that a 2degree bushing was the largest they could install? Find out what degree bushing they used. At $25 dollars per bushing they may not have used the largest they could get, just the largest they had laying around. Do u trust them? I think they do offer a spindle that has positive offset for the Upper ball joint so that you can install smaller bushings and get more adjustment in the future. Such a hard question to answer without seeing all the info in front of you on the alignment computer. Hope this helps a little bit.

 

This place was refered to me by a mechanic. He has been fixing my moms car for some time now. The shop is called FRANKS AUTO CENTER. The alignment guy told me that the camber was off -2.75 degrees because if he set the wheel on 0 it would chew up my tires more they already are. I have an appointment with him to go and have a body shop inspect and opinion the situation and said i could get the van realigned as many time it takes until i am happy with the results. I dont know waht is the max adjustment on the camber kit.

I spoke with my father in law today and hemationed that when the van got hit his radius arm got bent, and the auto body shop heated and bent it back into shape instead of replacing the arm. He said that he did not like that but car seemed fine enough for him. On the other hand though he is cheap and boot leg when it comes to auto repairs. The alignment guy said that if i wanted to he could set the camber to a 0 degree set.

 

Camber really should not be affected by the bending of radius arm, however the strength of this part is severly compromised once the hot wrench is applied. You still do not want the camber at 0 there should be some negative camber.

 

Yes you are correct. the camber changes once passengers get on the car. the camber goes from negative to positive. Do you think -2.75 degrees without passengers on board is to much.

 

Yeah, thats way to much, with weight in vehicle you will only see about .7 degree of positive camber rolled into it. I think that the true camber setting is actually like -.7 degree. Man it sure is tough to give good advice on alignments when the vehicle is'nt actually in your possesion. I always have the hardest time convincing customes with Ford truck and vans why it is important to spend the extra money to have them aligned properly. They all think they should be aligned for $50.00 and that just is'nt going to happen.