Track Bar Adjustment

Richard and Rhonda · 06-27-2009, 05:09 PM

I confess once again that I am absolutely nuts when it comes to the way a vehicle handles. Some of you know that I have been chasing a ever so slight pull to the right in my rig.

I adjusted the cross caster in the front end to give 1 degree more caster on the right than on the left. That helped.

I found the driver tag was toed out, which swings the coach to the right. I corrected that with Michaels most appreciated help. That also helped.

But..........it still had a slight pull to the right. By slight, I mean that if you took your hands off the wheel, it would drift out of the lane in about 200 yards. A visit to a high zoot alignment shop was fruitless. The guy wouldn't touch it after listening to what I had already done. His response was that he couldn't make it better that it already was.

I spent the morning measuring. I suspected the front axle might be cocked slightly to the line of the coach, since my caster adjustment could have thrown that off. Nope, front and rear axles are aligned to the 32 of an inch.

There has to be a punch line, right ?

I noticed that the side to side clearance on the front did not seem to be even. There was 3/4 difference from side to side. The trac bar is the device that keeps the axle centered on the air bags. Without a trac bar the axle would float back and forth over the bags. IFS and leaf spring suspensions don't have them,

I centered it up best I could, and a test drive confirmed that the pull was now almost imperceptible. Woo Hoo !!! Now I have to find something else to obsess over.

So....if you ever have any alignment work done make sure the shop checks the side to side alginment of the wheels to the frame before they start.

fulltiming · 06-27-2009, 05:35 PM

Great find Richard!! Now I get to go measure my side to side offset on the front. I know the rear is centered since it sticks out so far.

Incidentally, I did check and the vehicle width on the wide stance drive axle from the widest portion of the tire (other than the bulge at the bottom) is 103.5".