air ride/caster issues....any ideas?

[blkblk63ss]

Looking at your avatar it look's like you are running low profile tire's and you mentioned 17inch wide tire's in front.I would say those tire's will contribute to your rough ride ,stiff sidewall's.Iwould also remove shoch's and compress in your hand's how much resistance they have,another word's not locked up.also low profile tire you probably won't get a lot of height when you fully raise suspension.Reducing the pressure on power steering will make steering effort feel more like normal too.I would not change your upper arm',s till you do other thing's first If you have 2 1/2 positive caster I would think that would work ,to be close enough.Truth fully I could not see that much improvement with upper arm's I replaced as I had my caster set as high as I could get with stock arm's with out going below 0 camber.My steering is over sensitive also as I have Delphi 600 box,so I need to do that also to get a little feel to it.Do you have some stock wheel's and tire's you could put on to see how it drive's then.Changing them should not affect the alignment if any at all.With all those condition's I can see why it drive's like a go kart!!! (I made a home made one in high school age,rode rough too)..............home welded spindle broke going down sanded road threw me in a 360 spin !!!

 

[w ogden]

Don, the wheel and tire choice seemed like a good idea back when we designed the car somewhere around 2004! The shocks and the tire package are going under the microscope for sure. I do have a set of 15's from a Chevelle that I can borrow to test the ride difference but I am convinced that the shocks should be changed based on my conversation with Chad at RT. Those old oil shocks are just not going to do the job IMHO.
I am not going to change the upper control arms unless all else fails. I may be able to sell the tire/rim package and then I will go to a narrow 15 which should help the issue.

 

[1958 delivery]

Re-reading your initial post sure sounds just like the pick up I bought that was scary to drive (at first). That one was a handful and I tried going up, going down but couldn't get it to handle right. Since I bought it done I didn't really know where it was aligned or much about it. I finally went back to basics, I new that the wheels should be very close to vertical to be near alignment. I used a level and set the ride height where the front wheels were vertical/90 degrees to the floor. That did the trick, at least finding a "sweet spot". The suspension was such that if you varied away from the position the handling became a hand full and was scary to drive. Raising or lowering the rear never seemed to effect the handling.