| [GMCnet] Summary of the Align it Right! presentation made at GMCWS Casa de Fruita rally [message #167937] |
Sun, 29 April 2012 10:47  |
glwgmc
Messages: 1014
Registered: June 2004
Karma:
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Senior Member |
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Thanks Steve and Armand. I am glad you and so many others who have commented in person or off line found the information useful.
As important as it is for us to now make the corrections for the difference between biased ply and radial ply tire behavior that GM did not make, the 1000 pound gorilla in the room remains ride height. Not relative ride height, but absolute ride height. If that is not set correctly nothing else can be set correctly. With more than 90% of the coaches coming to this rally having incorrectly set ride height one can easily conclude that many if not most of the GMCs on the road have the ride height set incorrectly.
If you are still fighting a coach that wants to dart back and forth, or follow road ruts, or gets blown around in the wind, or exhibits a feeling of "torque steer", or if it feels like the front bumper is going to dig into the pavement on hard braking, start by setting the correct factory ride height. You may be amazed by how much better you coach drives with just this change.
If you are one who likes the way your coach drives now, you may really love the way your coach drives when you get the ride height where it should be.
Checking ride height only takes a few minutes right at home. Setting ride height is not difficult, but it is time consuming and does require the use of the special torsion bar unloading tool. It is time consuming because you have to jack up your coach to set the front ride height and any time you jack it up you have to drive it for a few miles before the suspension will settle into where it will be while you are normally going down the road. No amount of jostling or jumping on the bumper will properly settle it. And, it is an iterative process. Check, set, drive, recheck, set again, drive again, etc. until it is bang on rear and front after a few mile drive.
Once the ride height is correct, it is easy, fast and safe to check the alignment right on your own parking pad. Just follow the instructions you can download off of my web site http://jerrywork.com or the GMCWS web site.
If your coach still does not drive right, then almost certainly you have worn out bushings on the control arms, and/or worn out ball joints, and/or worn out tie rod ends, and/or your steering box is not centered when your wheels are parallel with the frame. If any of those are bad, then no amount of adjustment of anything will help. One unintended advantage of installing the one ton front end is it forces you to replace the bushings and ball joints and check the tie rod ends and centering of the steering box. There are all the other intended advantages that have been well articulated as well.
The bottom line for me is, why some very large percentage of our GMC owners (as many as 90% based on this sample) are willing to put up with an ill handling coach, or one that could handle much, much better?
Jerry
Jerry Work
The Dovetail Joint
Fine furniture designed and hand crafted in the 1907 former Masonic Temple building in historic Kerby, OR
Visitors always welcome!
glwork@mac.com
http://jerrywork.com
541-592-5360
www.southernoregonguild.org
www.siskiyouguild.org
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Message: 11
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2012 06:11:19 -0700
From: Steven Ferguson <botiemad11@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [GMCnet] Summary of the Align it Right! presentation made
at GMCWS Casa de Fruita rally
To: gmclist@temp.gmcnet.org
Message-ID:
<CAKe9xFQD5bhphHu1Z48Wrz1zd7u9C2xfg1r8WUkF+fjYyNnsaA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Just plain EXCELLENT Jerry.
On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Sharon Work <sharonwork@mac.com> wrote:
> Summary of the Align it Right! presentation made at GMCWS Casa de Fruita
> rally
Jerry Work
The Dovetail Joint
Fine furniture designed and hand crafted in the 1907 former Masonic Temple building in historic Kerby, OR
Visitors always welcome!
glwork@mac.com
http://jerrywork.com
541-592-5360
www.southernoregonguild.org
www.siskiyouguild.org
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Jerry & Sharon Work
78 Royale
Kerby, OR
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