I just had my '67 over to NTB today for some front tires and an alignment.

All I can say is .........Lord, it's like a different car!

It had F60-15 bias plys on the front when I bought it, and the front end was set up to stock specs. It wandered and darted something terrible, which is not good when you have a healthy 540 under the hood.

I got rid of those nylon bias tires and put on a set of 215x75R-15 Uniroyals. Then I had them set up the front end as close as I could get to specs I found while searching this site.

They ended up as follows:

Camber -0.5* both sides
Caster +1.9* left, +1.5* right
Toe .08" toe-in each side

This thing now drives like a Caddy. It goes as straight as an arrow, no darting at all. The steering wheel returns well after a turn, and is very responsive. This is saying alot because I have no front sway bar on it, and an HR Parts anti-roll bar on the back. 90/10 shocks on front, all Del-a-Lum bushings on front, and all heim joints on the rear. Definitely NOT a car set up for cornering.:D

It is now a completely different car driving down the road. It's a total pleasure to drive, so the money was definitely well-spent.:thumbsup:

Just thought I'd share this in case someone else needed a nice working baseline for their '66-'67 A-body.:)


Randy

The last time I got a Chevelle aligned, the shop I used would not set the alignment to anything other than factory specs. Is this still pretty common? Are there plenty of shops out there that will set it up the way you want it?

I can't say how common they are in your area, but there's several shops around here that will work with you.

I went to the NTB store at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. All the guys were just sitting around. I told the manager and the alignment guy what I needed to do, and they were fine with it.

They even gave me a 1 year warranty and told me to bring it back if I needed it tweaked a little.:)

I wouldn't go on a Saturday afternoon and expect the same level of cooperation.

Randy

Those 60-series bias-plys are bad for road-walk. Another thing, the GM A-body cars were set up with steering geometry that was slightly positive, in order to make it unstable :eek: . It seems that was desireable because it helped with steering effort on manual steering cars. By shimming the A arms so that they become slightly negative, you change the caster angle and trail angle so that the steering is more stable, plus a side benefit is that the suspension can absorb shocks slightly better. The slight increase in steering effort is nullified if you run power steering.

I apologize because I may sort of have the facts, and I may have the terminology wrong, but it is worth investigating. MuscleCar Review did an article (in the early 90's...) on such a modification.

I found that my '67 was darty when I got it. It was running E78-14s at the time, but after switching to P195/75R14 radials and having the alignment checked (I did not go for the modified settings) it felt so much better.