Yep.. I have had them bend in my favor to where I could get more camber on one side than the other. These knuckles bend pretty easily.
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Pulled the spindle and control arm. All the bolts were tight-nothing has moved or shows evidence of moving. On my garage floor the camber settings were still pretty exact what they were before. Maybe a few decimals off but that could be due to the floor. Still don't see anything that would have caused the drivers side wheel to be toed out an inch or two.
-The upppers don't appear to be slotted any and no evidence that they have moved.
-Spindle and control arm don't show any noticeable difference from the spares I have compared side by side. The spindle does look like it has a slight bend where the tie rod end goes through but nothing that would cause an inch or more of toe out. I stood the spindles upside down and measured the height from the floor to the top of the tie rod hole-there was a difference of 2 mm. So possibly slightly bent or just difference in build tolerances.
-Does anyone know if it's possible for the steering rack to jump over on the gear but would only affect one side? I have never seen the inside of our racks but I don't think this is possible.
-Maybe there is something else bigger that bent and I'm just totally missing it. At this point I'm going to replace the ball joint on the control arm, swap the spindle, then put it all back together. I may slot the k member a little more to see about getting a hair more camber but they are already enlarged.
-I'll max out the camber on the slots as normal to get as much as I can-around -2.0. Set the toe and run it. I'll have my suspension department doing an inspecting at the track.
[QUOTE=BryanL;70837] The spindle does look like it has a slight bend where the tie rod end goes through but nothing that would cause an inch or more of toe out. /QUOTE]
Think of the geometry. You measure toe as the difference in track width between the front and rear of the tires. Large tires - way out away from the spindle. Any small change near the spindle/centerline of the tire is essentially magnified the farther away from the centerline. So a .25 inch movement of the tie rod mount can become an inch of toe change. Other bends of the spindle can cause toe changes as well. Make sure you put a non-damaged spindle back on.
You sure are hard on equipment.
They bend fairly easily. I've bent two and broken one. The last one got bent at Atlanta from contact, which left me with 35* negative camber. Note: new ones from GM have gone way up in price. I paid like $360 for the replacement. They used to be around $180. And Rob is spot on regarding the geometry assessment.
If you guys make Leinart any faster I'll have to buy a Mustang.
If you have ruled out, "Being one deal off", then you may want to check the spot welds on the steering rack itself. They can bust easily, especially if you are airborne.
One deal off turned out to be a lower control arm that moved.