Thread: Wheelbase Problem on Chevy II

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After replacing the lower control arm bushings on my 1966 ChevyII I took it to the alignment shop and the mechanic said that after the alignment it was pulling very hard to one side, After an hour or so of double checking everything we realized that the wheelbase was an inch off from the left side to the right side, all the front and rear bushings are all good, has never been in an accident and the floors are original and solid.

Is this something that I should be very concerned with and is there a fix for it besides putting it on a frame machine to see where the problem is?

Take it somewhere else

He did get it lined up by giving it by adjusting the camber and said that it will drive straight, but now that I know about it it bugs me that it isn't the way it should be

There are many things that will cause a vehicle to pull---air pressure, tire roll out, thread patterns, biased and radial ply tire mix, corner weights, front not aligned with thrust line of car

You don't align a car by setting camber---it should of course be equal and in spec, but adjusting it to make a car track straight is not right

Take it somewhere else

Do you have printout of the settings before and after????

Did you physically run a tape measure down each side to accurately determine your WB is off?

Don

And diagonal measurements to see which side is long/short, rear out of square, etc.

if the wheelbase is off on 1 side, the car will dogtrack because the thrust angle is out of wack.

The car should go where the rear is pointed--the front has to be fixed to lead- the wheelbase is pretty much irrelavent if only a few inches
Garlits rear engine dragster had about 8 inches of wb stagger and it went straigt
NHRA then limited it to 2 inches and they all go sraight

Your front end is probably staggered and the guy has aligned the front wheels parallel and square to each other instead of to the driving wheels

Go somewhere else---your guy isn't getting it done and you aren't going to change him or his ways

From what I understand he measured the wheelbase side to side with a tape-measure, It is only a stock 6-cylinder car so I won't be setting any speed records with it. I just want a reliable car basically as a cruiser and don't want to have any problems on the road with it.

How the alignment was done this time was the old school way of doing it i may take it to someplace with a computerized machine and see what they tell me

Originally Posted by Matt167

if the wheelbase is off on 1 side, the car will dogtrack because the thrust angle is out of wack.

On the race cars (circle track) we usually have the left side wheel base 1/2" to 3/4" longer than the right side. This helps the car into the corner, it has no effect on the straights. You wouldn't want your car dog tracking at 150+ mph....