D44 wayyyyyy off camber

REM BROWN

Active Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2011
Location
Central, NC
I have a balljoint 79 ford HP d44 (with chevy knuckles) in the front of my truck. The tires have tons of positive camber. It still drves perfectly straight. Any ideas of how to fix this? I'm thinking something is bent or cause it is way off. Heres a pic:
 

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Redneck92 said:
I'd jack it up and check the balljoints.
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X2 also check the tightness of your wheel bearings. Do you know anyone else with chevy knuckles you could compare yours too. To see if they are bent.
 
Ball joints and bearings are decent. You think they could throw it off that much? I do know someone I could compare knuckles with I need to do that
 
What kind of caster/camber adjuster do you have on the upper ball joint? I'd bet it's installed backwards or (if adjustable) is way out of spec.

I doubt it's bent... for one thing, tough to bend them in that direction w/o having been in an accident. And then they wouldn't match.
 
They dont match. the passenger side is off alot more than the drivers side you just cant tell in the picture. Upper ball joint not adjustable. honestly the ball joints probably need to be replaced but i would't hink that could throw it off that much could it? Thanks for the help btw
 
Bad ball joints can't throw it off that much. But there is a caster/camber bushing. Even if it's not an adjustable one, it can be installed backwards.

What's the history on the axle? Have you had it apart, or did it come to you that way? Do the Chevy knuckles have the same balljoint locations as the Ford ones? Or maybe Chevy ones *require* an adjustable caster/camber bushing to account for differences in the casting? Just throwing out ideas here...
 
It's hard to tell from the picture but It kinda looks like your pinion may be way too high, causing negative caster. If the pinion is really high and it's toed in you'd get that look. I can't imagine it would drive as good as you say if that were the case but I guess it's possible. I may be wrong but I don't think there should be any difference between the chevy and ford knuckles as far as ball joint location goes. Whats the caster angle look like? upper ball joint in front of or behind the lower ball joint?
 
hey Mars the knuckles are the same from the chevy 44 to the ford. the only difference is the spindle bolt count and the caliper mt.. the bearings are the same stock numbers as are the ball joints. these are very common swaps for the disk brakes more common on the cheby's. seems stock ford disk are harder to come by. as for adjustable bushings none where to be had for these axles. The ball joint insert is concentric and putting it in upside down should be inpossible and even harder to rebolt the knuckle up since the taper would be runnin the wrong way.
i'm thinkiong in the direction you are or something grossly worn out which would show up as all kinds of funky handling to be that bad!
 
Was that always a leaf spring mount hp44? I'm thinking like Mars said the pinion is off causing the top of the knuckle to lean forward. I've don this swap before & didn't have this issue.
 
My Ford 60 has some positive camber from the caster being too far back. I'm hoping that doing a caster swing and then adding shims accordingly will get the caster, camber and pinion angles where I need them.

So I'd have to say you need to check everything out.
 
Do you have the shims between the spindle & the knuckle? If so you should be able to rotate them. Thin side down.
 
You need Cosmos shims. rock auto has them. specialty products has them. summit racing has them. find out how many degrees off you are from zero. order the shim that offsets that number. you can zero out each side with those shims. if you get offset balljoints you will need to get your alignment done every time you replace a balljoint. why not do it once and never have to do it again?
 
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