67' rear strut rods not in good alignment

[Dave K.]

Doing a frame off restoration and I am in the process of putting the chassis back together. Thus far I have the trailing arms, differential, half shafts, leaf spring, strut bracket, strut rods with camber bolt/shock bracket, and rear shocks installed. I did not tighten the camber bolt or the lower shock bolt that is attached to the shock bracket; I realize I need to this with full weight on the car. However, in the meantime I noticed that the strut rods are not in true alignment; meaning it is cock-eyed inside the strut bracket (not touching flush with both sides of the bracket) and it is also cock-eyed slightly in the spindle support where it attaches to the strut bracket. With this said, it is causing the lower shock mount grommet to distort inside the lower shock mount on the shock bracket.
Is there anything I can do now in terms of adjusting the camber bolt to help align the above mentioned issues or should I leave rear shocks off for now and put them on at a later time??

Thx,
Dave

[Wayne W.]

Re: 67' rear strut rods not not in good alignment

They will be in alignment when the suspension is in its normal loaded position.

[Edward J.]

Re: 67' rear strut rods not not in good alignment

Dave, if you have a I-phone it has a level built into phone and is a neat thing to have to just get the alignment to about zero. I used a small piece of wood about 15" long as a straight edge place against the wheel and place the I-phone against and then just rotated the camber nut to achieve zero degrees. The phone does have a calibration mode which is done first. and then start car up and move a few feet to recheck, this is done because the rear wheels don't want to slide easily when rotating the cam bolt, and then recheck.

[Patrick H.]

Re: 67' rear strut rods not not in good alignment

Ed's method works when you have the body back on the frame, but for now it's not going to change.
Once you get the car back together it will look just fine, as Wayne states.