Caster Issue?

[VIRGIN MIKE]

While working on doors (again), noticed this. Just got an "alignment" a few miles ago - can it be that far off?

Got too dark to troubleshoot but I thought I would seek opinions while I wait for daylight Doors are both 34"

159344. 159345

[GoDadGo]

Mike,

My pal Dave brought his 33 HR to a shop and they had the driver's side set on a positive angle with the other side negative.
Basically, they didn't know how to align the sucker and totally screwed it up.
Pull the tires and look at the spindles.
You'll know in a glance.
Good Luck!

Steve

[J R Jones]

Mike, The chassis and alignment are way more precise than bodywork. Especially considering the tolerance stack-up from body mounts through body and doors; not to mention doors hanging in space on the end of a strap?
Door jamb to tire tread has no metric. No worries here.
jim

[NAZ]

Mike, if you think it is an alignment issue causing one wheel to be further to the rear than the other -- measure it to be sure. It's possible if some Bozo was attempting to perform an alignment and didn't know what he was doing. But my money is on the body being asymmetrical.

FFR did a great job of welding together my hot rod chassis -- it was very symmetrical and without twists. I made my living as a welder and fabricator for many years and have built enough race car chassis to know how hard it is to keep tubing from warping. I'm anal about fit and FFR seems to have their chassis fabrication down. But when it comes to fiberglass bodies -- not so much. My hot rod body was wildly asymmetrical with as much as 3/4" difference between sides in some areas. Probably won't matter much to most builders but since I cut everything off at the firewall and fabricated the entire rear section including a roll cage that had to fit tight up against the doors and top, even a 1/4" variation was too much. That gave me fits. Probably would have been easier for someone with more body working skill than me but the point is, I'm in agreement with Jim -- I would suspect body symmetry issues before alignment. But if the alignment is the cause, it's easy to determine it from simply measuring.

You can find a point on the chassis as a datum such as a cross-member and measure to the center of the hub on each side. Or hub center to hub center front to rear on each side. Or any number of other point to point measurements from chassis members that you expect to be (or verified) square with the chassis centerline. If one front wheel is actually setting farther to the rear than the other you'll not only see it but can quantify how far it's off.