D44 ALIGNMENT ANGLES

[Oldtimer]

STEP 1: CAMBER

What is ideal CAMBER for a D44?
Daily driver, 2.5” suspension lift.
Pulled camber shims and had alignment actuals measured in preparation for cut and turn of inner “C”s to fix CASTER angles.

While I am at it, I would like to dial in CAMBER angles.

Measured CAMBER is .4 / .6

Spec is 1.0 / 2.0 , as determined by an Engineer with heavy influence by a Liability Attorney.

What is a ideal camber to target, based on real world experience?

 

[RODRIG3911]

In my opinion, your camber is better then factor and actually pretty damn good! 1-2 degrees would need shims in my mind.

 

[Yeller]

specs depend on a lot of things. There are several manufacturers with Dana 44’s or similar that all specified something different and sometimes from year to year. I’ve seen from 0 to 1.5. In my opinion anything between .3-.5 degrees drives good and has reasonable tire wear. The slight camber helps with return to center and I believe helps augment the effects of caster on tracking. In my opinion even with 6/7 degrees of caster and camber at zero still wander.

 

[Apogee]

FWIW, 0.40° and 0.60° are excellent camber numbers IMO and wouldn't be worth the effort or cost to change or modify. If my front axle comes in anywhere near those numbers with my HP D44 swap, I'll be thrilled.

In general, positive camber helps reduce steering effort, hence the Ford specs. Tire size and construction (bias versus radial) comes into play, as well as caster and other nominal alignment specs, but that's my understanding of how positive camber "helps". It also reduces straight line stability/tracking and can reduce the contact patch between the tire and ground, so cornering grip can suffer as well. That said, these are not race cars by any means, but even modern solid axle rigs like my 2014 F250 specify a relatively low +0.15° camber with ±0.75° allowance so long as there is no more than a ±0.75° split between the two sides.

If you look at agricultural tractors and certain off-road oriented heavy trucks (military, construction, etc), you'll see that they'll run much higher positive camber numbers since they don't need high-speed cornering abilties, but do a lot of low-speed work with a lot of weight on the front end, either with equipment, loaders or ballast for what's on the back.