I just swapped a wagoneer D44 under my truck and i'm tryin to figure out how to setup the pinion angle without gettin the castor too out of whack. what should the castor angle be, and how do you measure it accurately? the truck will be driven on the street a fair amount so i wanna make sure the steering is right, but i really dont wanna have to cut off the knuckles and rotate em.

the other question i have is about the pinion angle. i know that with a U-jointed shaft the pinion flange should be at the same angle as the tcase, but if its off a bit will it matter a lot since its on the front. like i said i dont wanna rotate the knuckles so could i get away with having the pinion angle off. i figure that since i'll be crawling i wont get it turning fast enough to get any bad vibrations. am i correct in thinking this? thanks everyone.

Dallas

You want to keep your caster as close as possible to 7-8*. Use an angle finder to check it. You can bring it up more if you need more pinion height but your road worthy manners will start to suffer

ok i know how to use an angle finder, but what do i attach it to, or set it against? i'm just confused on where to put the finder to get the true angle. also i'm assuming you mean have the top leaning back 7-8* right. thanks.

Dallas

As long as you aren't running offset balljoints (which you most likely are not), simply draw an imaginery line between the centers of the upper and lower ball joints. The amount off of vertical that the imaginery line is, is your caster. And yes, you want the top of the imaginery line to lean back towards the rear of the vehicle.

Sticking your *magnetic* angle finder to a steel rule and holding that up to the centers of the ball joints is an easy "hill rod" way to measure caster.

You won't get 1 degree of accuracy with this method, but it will indicate the difference between 2 degrees and 10 degrees.

cmk

if everythings built up, i put my angle finder on the bottom of the lower ball joint (remove the grease fitting if needed) it's pretty flat and will give you a close measurement.

i think you should set caster at whatever is stock for the axle and the pinion would be near flat, you really would have to cut and rotate to get any big difference in pinion angle anyway.
BTW i only run 1* of caster on my FJ55, i know i know, but i did much reading and reasearch and it works fine, no wobble, steering returns to center, feels fine at all speeds and i picked up a couple degree on the pinion.

oh yeah, part of my research was on racecar stuff, and with wider tires and offset, less camber is the norm because of the addition throw of the offset. anyway,my setup works great thus far and ive been on the highway and everything testing it.

I would say 1 to 5 degrees caster is good, 8 would be the very max. on big tires, higher caster will increase steering effort and when too far will cause a death wobble, like a bad shopping cart caster.

If you have high steer, you should be able to use the flat portion on the top of the knuckle. That's what I did, using a magnetic angle finder. I was told 6 degrees back was factory, but I used a chevy axle both times, shoot for somewhere between 4-8 and you should have no problems.