New Steering stuff; alignment issues

[BMERDOC]

When I did that alignment I know for a fact that it took me less than 45 minutes. There was no guess work, trying and retrying. It was a straight forward procedure.

[willett]

Excuse my ignorance but how could the shims be the problem if they previously (presumably) did the job? I would be more inclined to point the blame at wearing parts ie. ball joints and steering box. I'm assuming that Your steering box is oem......

I don't mean to be presumptuous, just seems logical to me.

[swissarmychainsaw]

Originally Posted by willett

Excuse my ignorance but how could the shims be the problem if they previously (presumably) did the job? I would be more inclined to point the blame at wearing parts ie. ball joints and steering box. I'm assuming that Your steering box is oem......

I don't mean to be presumptuous, just seems logical to me.

The theory is that "caster" controls the "return to center" of the wheel.

The caster on this truck has not been set in forever, and the specs showed it did not have enough positive angle, hence the re-alignment.

So the did NOT previously "do the job"!

Also I have not owned the truck long enough to know if it was OK previously!
So I'm just trying to make it as good as I can without breaking the bank.
Well the bank is breaking...

[BMERDOC]

Originally Posted by willett

Excuse my ignorance but how could the shims be the problem if they previously (presumably) did the job? I would be more inclined to point the blame at wearing parts ie. ball joints and steering box. I'm assuming that Your steering box is oem......

I don't mean to be presumptuous, just seems logical to me.

I'll add this. Over the years as a truck gets alignments the aligner adds and subtracts shims. After a while it seems that shims keep getting added and added. The aligner normally calls that good enough and the angles end up going in an undesired direction shollowing (negative) caster and making camber excessively positive. That's why my advice is to remove all the shims and start from scratch with new ones.