A few years back, I did the 11" brake upgrade on my 84 Cougar. I used spindles and rotors from an 88 LX as well as a new complete poly bushing kit to tighten things up. When I did the alignment, I had the tech use the specs for an 84 Cougar and he remarked on how close the results were after the swap. I recently noticed outside tire wear on my 225/50/16s fronts. Before I get new tires, I want to resolve this issue.
What specs should I be using.......84 Cougar or 88 Mustang?
Have you had the alignment checked recently to confirm that it has not moved since it was set a few years ago?
Nope. This is why I want to know which specs to use. The reason behind this is that I flat-spotted my fronts while checking the brake bias. Since I'm looking at BFG G-Force sport comps ($$$) I want to have every piece of this puzzle in it's place before installing tires and doing an alignment.
On a side note, once i switched the fronts with the backs ,my line-loc did a fantastic job of bringing them back to "round".....with only about 25% of the tread left! LOL.
I doubt there is much difference between the specs.
If you're still running stock strut mounts, you can't add any positive caster, which these things need, to improve front grip and tire wear.
The Fox front suspension gains a lot of positive camber on the outside wheel while turning. This doesn't help grip or tire wear.
Not sure of the exact stock spec for the cars, but I'd like to have at least 0.5* of negative camber (tops of the wheels tipped in). Too much will lead to inside tire wear. You just need a little to help offset the inherent loss in the stock configuration.
Adding positive caster to the system will help with beneficial camber gain on turn, lessening the tendency of the outside wheel to tip out on turn, thus improving grip and tire wear.
Could I achieve these results with MM plates?
Maximum has suggested alignment specs for street and race cars. I have both of mine on their street settings and they work great. See below and the specs are on the bottom right of page three and continue on to the top left of page four. The alignment shop I normally go to would not test drive the car after putting it to these settings so I took it to the local Firestone shop and they were more than willing to do the work the way I wanted. I think the tech just wanted to drive the car.
http://www.maximummotorsports.com/Assets/install/pdf/front_susp/MMCC8388r4.pdf
thanks