Yeah, that may be part of the reason that I'm sticking with the prerunner rake on my van. I like how it handles now, and I like the view up front.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mgmetalworks
I know, right?
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Hah.
For those not in the know, MGM has a kit that does just that.
I have a bit of experience with different casters on a lifted coil spring setup. When I got my van it actually had negative caster. Which honestly works OK. You end up with a dead spot in the center which may be familiar if you've ever backed up a vehicle with positive (typical) caster. There was no death wobble, the van self centered after turns, and was a little off in ruts, but was generally usable by regular drivers.
Then the bushings on my rear spring shackles went (a regular, high mileage e-series wear item), followed shortly by me blowing out my ill sized shocks (my own personal fault). This left me with a van that was downright scary to drive.
I ended up fixing the caster first, because it was what an alignment check brought out. I used the bd-diesel kit (second hand from MGM
), and it made the van which was still a real handful much easier to manage. Mind you, this is with a van where the rear axle is still randomly steering, which is a little bit like a couple of horses randomly kicking your vehicle off course at random moments.
The real culprit was of course the rear spring shackles (thank you Agile for having me check them!!!), with that fixed things were pretty good, working shocks being the last thing to check off.
However, this showed me that I was much more capable of catching and re-balancing a van that was thrown off kilter with more caster than with less.
Randomly, my daily driver has over seven degrees of caster, which is spec. If anything it centers more slowly than the van. However it has nearly no weight at all in the front.
I may hunt down some shims to dial in more just as a learning exercise, but I suspect that:
- either these vans aren't really susceptible to death wobble
or
- far enough away from 0 is generally stable, at least with a heavy front end
- there's a point of enough positive and you're good. More is OK, but doesn't
improve further.
Again, these are things I suspect, and would like to prove or disprove, so I'd love to hear about any real experiences that any of you may have had that are relevant, or even just adjacent.