Holycack

Is it possible to adjust the castor ourselves or is better to bring the truck to a alignment shop? Once castor is adjusted does it mess with other alignment angles?

dozer12216

Yes you can adjust castor, but you would have no ideal of what you were doing. Yes castor does affect the other alignment specs. Take to active 4 wheel drive or truck shop that deals with 4X4's regurally.

98whitelightnin

i had my 98 aligned and asked the guy to adjust my caster, he told me that dodges didnt hold caster very bood and to get offset balljoints well i got home and did it my self without offset balljoints and everything is good

triplenickel

If I was you with that lift I would just max it, it'll take you about 5 minutes.

Raspy

The caster adjustments are on the bottom axle trailing link. They are accentric adjusters. The left and right cannot be set separately. You can max them both out to help with death wobble if you want. Just rotate the adjusters to move the bottom of the axle forward as much as possible. This will have little or no affect on the other settings.

The offset ball joints are used to adjust camber or if you want to adjust caster different on the left vs the right.

After I put in new ball joints I went to the front end shop and got an alignment. I just told them to max out the caster adjusters and bring everything else to specs. Then I recorded the caster differences (because that is not adjustable, but set with offset ball joints ). This way I can later get the right ball joints to correct the slight pulling to the right.

Holycack

Ok I adjusted the caster essentric bolts so that the index mark is pointing as far over toward the front of the truck. This seemed to move the the top of the axle toward the back, went out for a test drive first pothole I hit the DW struck again. Did I adjust the cams the wrong dirrection? I have never felt DW before till 3 days ago and now its continuous. Any suggestions? BTW the first post states what on the truck has been changed out.

dozer12216

Holycack, you need to look for loose/worn components. If it just started might look carefully at tires for damage, dirt lodged in wheel, bent component, basd belt in tire, ect.

Holycack

OK I talked to the alignment shop, turns out dumb me didnt understand the castor instructions and turned the eccentric nuts the wrong way. The index mark must be pointed toward the rear of the vehicle not the front as I had done. Now it is correct and DW is gone, horpefully for good.

XLR8R

The fat part of the eccentric cam should be rotated toward the front of the vehicle to increase front axle caster.

Caster is the difference - expressed in degrees - between a vertical line and the line drawn through the center of the upper & lower ball joints.

Hayseed

Check carefully the steering box. The shaft coming out the bottom especially while someone else rocks the steering wheel. The adjustment on the top of the box also. If it is too loose DW will show up. If you get it to tight the steering will not return to center on its own. If too tight just loosen it up a bit. Takes a 5/8" wrench and I believe a 1/4" allen wrench.

checkster

So we could check our caster sitting an angle finder on top of the balljoint maybe?

XLR8R

Not really - it's awfully hard to see with such fine resolution (~4.5*+) is what I align for.