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Front Suspension

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xsteamer

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I plan on doing front bushes (minimum) this winter . I've read various posts regarding how to proceed and what to check. However, I didn't see any mention of wheel alignment after or what to do before to prevent, if anything, a front end alignment. Any comments?
 
If you do the front bushes, you will need to do an alignment. I wouldn't count on having everything line up, even if you don't touch the tie rod end adjustment. It's not hard to do though, there's no camber or caster adjustment. I built an L-shaped 2x4 frame with the long piece going under the car, and the short piece up against the edge of the tire. Then I used a square placed along the lower 2x4 snug against the same point on the other tire, and took several measurements at different points on the tires after rolling the car back and forth. Crude, but it worked. To make sure the steering wheel was aligned, I first tied a string to a jackstand placed behind the rear wheel, then laid the string across the rear tire and adjusted the tie rod ends until both front tires were parallel to the rears. Again, I rolled the car back and forth and did this a couple of times. Once I got the steering wheel aligned I did the toe-in alignment, and the trick to keeping the wheel straight is to turn each tie rod by equal amounts. In my case the wheels needed to toe in a little, but only took about 1/2 turn on each tie rod. Hope this helps!
 
I had the local tire company (Les Scwab) do my alignment as it wasn't anything I trusted myself to do. The tech found a bearing problem I had not noticed. $20 USD well spent.

Guinn
 
If the bushings are in real sad shape an alignment should be done or at least checked by a shop no matter what. But if the bushings ain't that bad and you don't touch the tie-rods you should be ok. However to be safe do some measurements before you start tearing into it.

Similar to the procedure Dave laid out - I centered the steering wheel and measured the center point of the tires and spun them to make sure the measurement was as accurate as possible. Then I turned the wheel lock to lock and re-centered the wheel and checked my measurements again.

Once I was comfortable that my measurements where good I started the bushing replacement. Now in my case I had to replace the torn & worn-out steering rack boots and install some new tie-rod ends. With the tie-rods I counted the number of turns (1/2 turn increments) as I was removing the old ones and counted of turns as I installed the new units. Once I put it all back together I check my measurements again.

Now I recommend that if you’ve never done this before you might want to have a shop re-check the alignment again. But the procedure above should get you close enough to drive to the shop without the added expense of having to have it towed.

Good luck!
Bret
 
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