I just did an AAL in the rear, and cranked the torsion bars to about 3/4ths inch more in the front.
Is it necessary to do an alignment right away?
I'm going to get it in the shop for other things anyways within the next week.

 

You'll want to get it aligned as soon as reasonable possible. It won't shred your tires in the next day or two



Fred

 

o_o
maybe i'll just relax the Tbars then....
it'll be like, next week before i get it in for an oil change and alignment...

on a scale of 1-10 how hard is it to align these trucks ourselves?

 

scale of 1-10, 1 being easy, 10 being hard...
hmm... to get it right and compensate for everything you should be checking...
... 9- very difficult
and... to get it close enough to last a few weeks until you get can it done properly...
... 3- pretty easy

 

Hmmm
well i guess i'll limit my driving, and then get it in on tuesday.

 

Actually, having re-read that driveway alignment write-up i think i'm going to go ahead and try it.
I have all the tools to do it, so why not try?

And why exactly would cranking Tbars affect the alignment?
Wouldn't it just increase toe-in? I can't see camber or caster being affected at all.

 

I did the writeup and I wouldn't say its 100%, but it drives nicely (and I'm picky) and it doesn't eat tires. I've put on about 6000 miles on my truck since the writeup and the front tires are wearing at about the same as the rears with a rr locker, which is too say a little more than normal, but not ridiculously fast. Its certainly good enough to last a couple months without any extra tire wear.

 

Camber and toe will change. Toe is simple enough to set in your driveway. Camber is another story.
Camber changes because you changed the angle of the control arms when you cranked up the torsion bars. Watch the control arms as someone puts some weight on the front end. As their relationship to the ground changes so does camber. Camber even changes as you go over bumps but it comes right back as the suspension relaxes back to normal ride height.

 

You can get camber pretty close if you have a level garage floor and use a plumb line. You measure the distance from the plumb line to the top of the rim, and then again at the bottom to find the difference to get the camber. Weight must be on the tire to do this.

 

yeah, i understand camber, and i figured out the toe-in thing.
toe-in seems pretty easy to set as well.
toe is only going to need adjusted back out, but camber needs to be level o.0.