Thanks guys. I enjoy taking the pictures and documenting the journey ?
And thank you Dennis for that detailed post.
I didn't break out the proper measuring tools but, by eye and feel when inserting the shims, I'm pretty confident the top and bottom surfaces for the king pin eyes were reasonably close to parallel. Helpfully the spacer washers I had were a nice snug fit. All the comments looked pretty clean really, and the axle eyes looked particularly fresh, which does make me wonder if a previous owner had done the king pins recently, but maybe just got a bit carried away with an expanding reamer in the top bush or something?
Regarding the axle alignment, I might not have explained myself very well, I'm confident that the axle and radius arms are pretty straight, they all lined up nicely when going together. My problem is of my own making!
I immobilised the one end of the front shock absorber, as suggested by various sources to improve handling, but as the car is sitting quite high and the damper arms are at quite an angle (not the best picture it makes them look flatter than they are) the centre mounting bolts are not lining up with the chassis.
If I bolted it up as it stands, it would be trying to force the axle 3/4" to the right. As the chassis lowers, damper arm becomes flatter which pushes the centre section sideways and eventually it would be holding the axle nicely centralised. I'm realising that for my (currently....) standard height car I don't think it's going to go low enough even with the weight of the engine, radiator, etc, to get to that centralised point.
With a few days perspective it's not the end of the world, and I will probably cut the damper arms and extend them with a threaded section so I can fine tune the length to whatever gets the axle nicely entered in the car at ride height.
I know that it's still a bit flawed, as the damper arm length is too short to be a 'good' panhard rod, but it's got be better to have some form of lateral axle location rather than none haha.
And thank you Dennis for that detailed post.
I didn't break out the proper measuring tools but, by eye and feel when inserting the shims, I'm pretty confident the top and bottom surfaces for the king pin eyes were reasonably close to parallel. Helpfully the spacer washers I had were a nice snug fit. All the comments looked pretty clean really, and the axle eyes looked particularly fresh, which does make me wonder if a previous owner had done the king pins recently, but maybe just got a bit carried away with an expanding reamer in the top bush or something?
Regarding the axle alignment, I might not have explained myself very well, I'm confident that the axle and radius arms are pretty straight, they all lined up nicely when going together. My problem is of my own making!
I immobilised the one end of the front shock absorber, as suggested by various sources to improve handling, but as the car is sitting quite high and the damper arms are at quite an angle (not the best picture it makes them look flatter than they are) the centre mounting bolts are not lining up with the chassis.
If I bolted it up as it stands, it would be trying to force the axle 3/4" to the right. As the chassis lowers, damper arm becomes flatter which pushes the centre section sideways and eventually it would be holding the axle nicely centralised. I'm realising that for my (currently....) standard height car I don't think it's going to go low enough even with the weight of the engine, radiator, etc, to get to that centralised point.
With a few days perspective it's not the end of the world, and I will probably cut the damper arms and extend them with a threaded section so I can fine tune the length to whatever gets the axle nicely entered in the car at ride height.
I know that it's still a bit flawed, as the damper arm length is too short to be a 'good' panhard rod, but it's got be better to have some form of lateral axle location rather than none haha.