Are these a good idea for a stock ride height car? Or are they more intended for use on something lowered?

Any help appriciated

Primary use was for cars with frame sag. It is to increase the amount of positive camber that can be adjusted into the front end; which would benefit a raised car more than a lowered car. I have them on my 77 Nova and the car is at stock ride height and also have a set for the El Camino that will be installed next month.

if you get an alignment and they have 1/2" of shims in there, you need the offset shafts.

If they can align it and use 3or4 shims, its not worth the expense.

I bought a front end rebuild kit and a big disc brake conversion kit and it came the off-set upper shafts. My frame is in awesome shape with no sag and after I got it all together and went to get an alignment, it's still a degree out from where I want it with no shims! I have to take it all apart and buy new stock style upper shafts and replace them. Ben is right, look and see how many shims you have in there now.

Can anyone confirm this... I've been reading a bunch on these shafts and cannot get a straight answer on this.

Typical use for these is when you have a giant stack of shims on the rear position to fix frame sag (additional camber).
Installed like this ---\_______/----- which should eliminate some of the shims.

From my reading- it sounds like the pro touring guys are using these shims in reverse to gain extra Caster- as the stock arms/shafts only have about 2degees caster possible.

So... i guess that would be installed like this:?
_________
--/ \------

I'm not really understanding, because reversed, you would still need to add shims to the rear to get the camber right..

Can anyone clarify how these are used in a performance steering situation to gain caster?

My car doesn't have frame sag, currently only has a single 1/8" shim on each sides rear stud-

Trying to decide if its worth it for me to get these shafts Before i put the front end back together with new stuff or not.


I bought a front end rebuild kit and a big disc brake conversion kit and it came the off-set upper shafts. My frame is in awesome shape with no sag and after I got it all together and went to get an alignment, it's still a degree out from where I want it with no shims! I have to take it all apart and buy new stock style upper shafts and replace them. Ben is right, look and see how many shims you have in there now.

BTW.. Mike I have two extra sets of Upper control arms (including that set you gave me) You are welcome to either one of the stock upper control shafts if you want.

To get more positive caster, it is necessary to stack shims on the rear stud. This kicks the upper ball joint rearward, creating more positive caster. At best about 2.5 to 3 degrees is all that is attainable with a stock A-arm because of various factors (the length of the studs, header clearances, etc.).

By using the offset shaft in reverse, it kind of "cheats" the forward mounting stud by allowing the front of the A-arm to come out more, so rather than adding shims to the rear mount you are, in effect, removing shims from the front mount and creating a new starting point to adjust from. The biggest problem with this is that it also makes a lot of positive camber (which nobody wants) so you end up using even more shims. On top of that, there are no guarantees. Each car is different, they all require a different amounts of shims. Camber and caster are both adjusted by these shims so just because you are now able to get the caster you need, your desired camber may not be attainable, especially on a lowered vehicle.....

There are really only a few ways to consistently get modern alignment specs (+5 to +7 degrees of positive caster) on older cars: Reposition the upper A-arm mount rearward, use A-arms with offset caster slugs, use adjustable A-arms, or use A-arms with positive caster already built into them....

Can anyone confirm this... I've been reading a bunch on these shafts and cannot get a straight answer on this.

Typical use for these is when you have a giant stack of shims on the rear position to fix frame sag (additional camber).
Installed like this ---_______/----- which should eliminate some of the shims.



From my reading- it sounds like the pro touring guys are using these shims in reverse to gain extra Caster- as the stock arms/shafts only have about 2degees caster possible.

So... i guess that would be installed like this:?
_________
--/ ------

I'm not really understanding, because reversed, you would still need to add shims to the rear to get the camber right..

Can anyone clarify how these are used in a performance steering situation to gain caster?

My car doesn't have frame sag, currently only has a single 1/8" shim on each sides rear stud-

Trying to decide if its worth it for me to get these shafts Before i put the front end back together with new stuff or not.




BTW.. Mike I have two extra sets of Upper control arms (including that set you gave me) You are welcome to either one of the stock upper control shafts if you want.

Thanks for the detailed response Brett- I did some more reading after posting and had come to the same conclusion that you wrote about- you basically still wind up using a bunch of shims, but wind up with a different type of problem (camber angle)

I think i'm just going to stick with the stock cross shafts and arms for now.

Thanks!
Ben