The end of an era?

Ian

Notorious member
IH is notable in my book as being one of the very few companies to ever make an on-road vehicle specifying a zero caster angle. I haven't met another front-end guy yet who can get their head wrapped around that. The only one I ever messed with was lifted 2" (surprisingly with springs and shackles instead of blocks) and had all the pinion angles and caster screwed up. I ended up having to put some wedges on all four corners to get the pinion angles right and then after taking some careful alignment measurements jerked the whole front axle out, took it home, and spent the evening with a torch, grinder, sledge hammer, and welder to get the knuckle yokes rolled back where they should have been (about 3° positive) and have a little cross-caster to them. No offset upper ball joint sleeves required, not that they would have provided enough adjustment anyway. After that, you could actually drive the thing down the highway with no driveline vibration and not so much fear that it was going to dart into the bar ditch suddenly, and when you turned a corner, the steering wheel actually wanted to return to center.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
This is why I pay others to do this kind of work. Someone has to keep Ian employed.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
when you got them right though you could just let them roll and steering was effortless.
I put smaller steering wheels on both of my scouts, and the white/red truck because they were too easy to over steer with the big leftover non power steering wheels they had.
you could run all of them up over 120 and drive with one hand no problem.
a couple of the others I had, not so much, you had to keep banging the worm gear off the pinion arm to keep it on a dirt road at 30.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Zero caster?!! Yikes. I would imagine that would be a real handful to drive, no tendency to center the wheel
at all. One of the improvements that US car makers did in the 70s to get cars to "handle" (which means
a whole lot of different things to different folks) better was to increase the caster angles to get some
feedback in the steering wheel rather than the fairly typical numb, dead feeling of the 60s cars. They had
enough to keep the wheels straight, but with power steering zippo feel off of center.

Bill
 

Ian

Notorious member
Any straight-axle, 4x4 vehicle with shackles ahead of the front axle, high-arched lift springs, and positive caster is going to take highway bumps hard, just the nature of the beast. Best thing I ever did to a CJ other than replace the frame with a fabbed, hydroformed frame was to put the shackles on the trailing side of the front axle. DOM tubing with accurate, fractional ID is perfect for all the mid-'70s Chevy polyurethane spring and shackle bushings, making it super-easy to fab bracketry for such a swap.
 

creosote

Well-Known Member
My daily driver is a cj 5. Ive wanted to do a shackle reversal for 18 years now. The wife HATES driving it. My truck has the dual side impact exploding gas tanks. All I need is a pinto, and a corvair, and I'd have All the Ralph Nader dangerous vehicles. That I know of. :(:confused:
 

Intheshop

Banned
Had a guy working for me.....25? years ago.He had just come from working a cpl years for/under tutelage of Keith Black.Said Keith drove a Pinto as his DD.
 

creosote

Well-Known Member
Keith must've needed some opposition.

A guy I knew had a little race truck with a keith black Engine. He said he wasn't allowed to work on it or take it apart in any way. Top secret stuff.
 

RBHarter

West Central AR
I met a Cummins rep once driving a brand new TJ with a 3 cyl turbo diesel in it . He claimed to have knocked off Richfield to Green River UT (115 miles no stops or slow downs of open highway with a rest stop about 60 miles out) in an hour flat . I drove a couple CJs and I can't even imagine ........ I'm sure it ran fine it's the short wheel base that would weird me out .

Of course the things I've seen at Hot August Nights .... A blown BBC in a Morris Minor and another in a full race Vega coupe complete with a chute and wheelie bars .
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I can attest to pinto's not exploding from rear end collisions.
we managed to back one into a light pole at about 35 mph.
it might have been the 7 of us piled in it at the time that cushioned the blow enough to just dent the bumper and blow out the back window.
the sudden stop also removed one of the occupants from the vehicle and he had to ride on the roof on the way home as punishment.
more like 2 other guys took his spot and he couldn't get back in.
 

Ian

Notorious member
There had to be a liberal dose of hydroxide compounds involved with that episode!:p
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Technically they are hydroxyl groups.

And I was thinking the same thing. Sounds like a “here, hold my beer” kind of event
 
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Intheshop

Banned
Pinto's make me hungry.....

Not questioning Mr Nader's sincerity or ? but would think if you rammed the back of a LOT of cars with tanks under the trunk that fire/explosion wouldn't be all that surprising?Sounds suspicious,haha.
 

Intheshop

Banned
So,while the pinto's are on the stove....

I take go fast M/C'ing pretty durn serious.Just sayin,you don't need beer to throw one down the rd..... doh.And kids,don't do this at home.A dear friend has a 50k sq foot veneer biz warehouse.He's a lifer on two wheels.It took/takes about 3 beers to get this right but.We used to ride sorta junky sportbikes in his warehouse seeing who could lock up the Fr brake and then measure the distance of the resulting slide.The floor was POLISHED,slick as a peeled onion from decades of running tow motors on it.We'd get going in 1st gear and at the predetermined point,yank down on the Fr binders.30-40' if you're good.About 5' if you're not?
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
there was a pretty high possibility of several compounds being involved in my younger day's.

to this day I'm pretty sure some stuff we pulled is still under investigation.
I don't know if dollar amounts stretch out the statute of limitations or not, but I'm sure we would still be paying restitution on a couple of them.
 

pokute

Active Member
Got pulled over on New Year's Eve 1979 (Ford Fiesta): Cop: "Son, do you know you made that left turn with all four wheels off the ground?"
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I think I am safe with Marilyn.
I got the posters, cut-out's, and other accoutrements to go with the Avatar.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
There had to be a liberal dose of hydroxide compounds involved with that episode!:p

Remember when NBC (IIRC) was caught using pyro technics to get a pickup gas to "explode" like the network claimed they would? Anything can happen occasionally, but after being on scene at literally thousands of car accidents, I've yet to see a single one do the Hollywood exploding gas tank deal.