I lowered my car with an Eibach Pro-kit, and now I have bumpsteer. I have ordered the Baer bumpsteer kit, but I am not sure how to adjust these in order to get rid of the bumpsteer. Can I just take it to NTB? Do I need special tools? Trial and error? Any help would be greatly apprciated. This bumpsteer thing has me irritated. I would hate to have to yank the springs.

 

I haven't heard anyone with a 4th gen f-body complain about bumpsteer, this may be a first!

My understanding is that the adjustments are made by removing the springs and measuring the alignment settings (toe, particularly) thoughout the range of travel of the suspension. Then the tie rods are adjusted to minimize the change in toe. This is probably a job for a race chassis shop, or something you'd need to do yourself with the various alignment tools. I doubt if a normal alignment shop would take this on.

Dave

 

Bumpsteer is change of toe with suspension travel. You measure it by measuring the toe while you move one wheel through its' vertical travel. Adjusting the bumpsteer kit, as far as I know, is trial and error. You probably need a serious racing shop and $$$.

Be careful. You are replacing very reliable and safe ball joints (which generally give a lot of warning before they fail) with rod ends, which can fail suddenly. The problem is knowing what good rod ends are and how to maintain them. There are no quick and easy answers anywhere that I've seen.

 

I've had these units for over 5 yrs now w/ no problems. That's including alot of hard driving on road courses too. Had them installed at a local tire aligment shop and took them 6 hrs to get it down.

Supposedly when lowering a fbody it's required to have these. Don't know how true that is but at the time of my inexperience w/ suspensions and being recommended I did it. Don't know too many people w/ them either.

 

Whose "bump-steer" kit did you use?

3 years ago, I attempted to install BAER's bump steer kit (from RK Sport), when I installed my Global West Del-A-Lum-bearing tubular Upper Control Arms and my LG Motorsports severe-duty rod-end-bearing welded-boxed steel Lower Control Arms. My car had been previously lowered with Eibach Pro springs and HD Bilsteins.

I adjusted the toe to driveable conditions with all of the hardware installed and left it with my Master-Mechanic friend to align to LG specs. After 3 hours, he was absolutely unable to adjust Toe, once the castor and camber settings were set. The resultant Toe was severely toe-out (screeching-tire-spinning the rear tires undriveable out-of-spec).

Upon further inspection, I discovered that the rod-end screw went too far into the coupler to allow the Toe adjustment to brought anywhere near zero. The steering rack threaded rod and the BAER rod-end were hitting butt-to-butt. As I did not know how critical the thread engagement was, I chose NOT to grind the rod-end thread shorter to allow adequate adjustment. I had to reinstall the stock steering links and return the BAER kit to RK Sport.

I don't know if the combination of GW and LG control arms somehow reduced the available Toe adjustment range with this kit, but it did not work for me.

How did you get yours to work?

Note I too bought them based on recommendation. However, frankly, I don't notice any change in steering direction, when negotiating moderate bumps when going through a corner hot.

Thanks,
Rick R

 

The threads had to be cut. It even said that w/ the install since they are longer than the stk units. I've never had a problem w/ them and glad I have them.

I also purchased them from RK and Bobby was the one who told me that in order for them to run some cutting would be required but she didn't have an exact length.

 

I had the BAER bump steer kit (from RK Sport) installed by a service shop. I was having the rack-in-pinion replaced anyway, so I figured I'd have the tie rod ends replaced at the same time. They went on without a hitch, then I got my car aligned at a performance alignment shop. I'm currently using the racing alignment specs as suggested by GW when using their upper control arms. 3 years now and I'm very happy.
Kurt

 

I guess I received 1 of the first units. My package had NO instructions for cutting the rod-end threads and Chris from RK Sport did not recommend that either. I knew if I attempted to modify them and they still did not work, I would be stuck with the product. For $160, I should not have to have them machined. Oh well I guess I did their R&D for them.

Also, for 6 months after I returned the units, I kept getting recall letters from BAER. It appears that they improperly heat-treated a batch and it failed on a customer.

Rick R

 

OUCH!!!

 

Every car has bumpsteerto some degree. What is the car doing that makes you think it is excessive? When I checked my car I found it to move toe-in about .038" for the first inch of bump travel, and another .040" for each aditional inch of travel. Playing with a bumpsteer kit showed the best results(least toe change) were achieved by moving the pivot point 3/16" closer to the spindle. You results may vary due to alignment specs, etc.

 

Cool data, Apex, thanks. Do you happen to have the results (new toe numbers thru travel) from after you did the 3/16" move?

Dave

 

Kinda wierd that you're getting bumpsteer...I installed the PRo-Kit and also ordered the Bumpsteer kit from Baer and got everything set up and I checked my car with the stock tie rod ends and I only have 5 thou. of total bumpsteer!!!!! I though it was pretty cool. So I sent back the kit.

 

Numbers with the pivot moved 3/16" closer to spindle: normal ride 0", 1" bump +.016"(+ = toe in), 2"bump +.034". I've run bumpsteer checks on several cars and never found one anywhere near .005 total toe change, so RdRacer is very lucky indeed. 3rd gen's can be set up with a very nice curve, about .020" over 4" of travel. Mustangs take a lot of work to get a good curve, although I know an AS guy who says he's down to about .015" total.

 

Yah..I'm going to leave well enough alone heh

 

I think my bumpsteer is excessive, because my car follows lines really badly. I'm going to get my wheel bearings and current tie rod ends checked first before trying to install the bumpsteer tie rod ends just to make sure I'm not wasting money. I've talked to many people on this board with the Pro-kit and they have had no trouble, so I'm beginning to think I had a previous issue that was made worse with the installation of the pro=kit. God, I hope it's not the hub assemblies. Those things are ungodly expensive. Thank you guys for all your help.