Procedure For Shimming Control Arms To Add Camber?

[a67]

I'm curious how one could check caster at home. Just looking at the car from the side, you can see that the front wheels are at least straight up and down, ...

You can't see caster from the side unless the wheels are removed. Caster is the relation of the upper ball joint to the lower ball joint. Positive caster has the upper joint further toward the rear of the car then the lower. This is what you want. To measure caster the wheels need to be turned to the left and camber measured. Then turn the wheels to the right and again measure the camber. Usually a 20° turn in each direction is required. It takes some math to the difference in the left/right readings to get the caster value. But it is worth it. I dabbled in front end alignments over the past years. But when the alignment guy used a hammer on the upper strut mounts of my 3rd gen f-body did I get serious about doing it myself. Since then none of my cars have seen an alignment shop. Got turntables and a caster/camber gauge. The caster part of the gauge was so far off I did the math myself using the camber portion of the gauge (bubble type). Yes, my cars have a good alignment, it works. The best thing I did was to get real turntables, it made all the difference in the world. Repeatable results are a good thing. Bob. {edit} P.S. This is strange, the site removed all of my formatting and paragraphing. WTF?