I was wondering if someone could clarify the steps for checking caster with a digital protractor. I thought is was as simple as setting the protractor on a straight and vertical bar(I used a carpenters level) against the tire, turning the wheel outboard about 20 degrees from straight,setting the protractor to zero, turning the wheel inboard 20 degrees from straight and then subtracting the two and that would be your caster.

My problem is that I'm only reading about +1.4 degrees on each side and the spec is around +2.25. Camber is about .+.2 degrees on each side so that will still have to go a bit more positive. After stewing over this caster for a good part of the afternoon I decided to make a fixture that picks up on the factory ball joint studs to try and read the caster directly and there I get about +2.00 so I;m thinking that I'm in the ballpark. I've been Googling how to do this for the past few hours and I found several sites for checking caster with the magnetic camber/caster bubble tool so that seems to be the more common way to do this but I don't have that tool.

I also found a couple sites that say to do what I have been doing BUT to multiply my final reading by 1.5. So is that all that I need to do now is to multiply my reading by 1.5? It seems to get me in the ballpark if I do, I just don't understand where or why this 1.5 factor comes into place.

 

Lots of posts on this..heres mine with learnings from others..
try a phone or ipad

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...on-please.html

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...sing-ipad.html

 

interpon, thank you very much! Your post helped clear up what I was questioning about multiplying the caster reading times 1.5. I'm still not sure why there is a multiplication factor but I'll leave that for another day, or just go and buy a good camber/caster tool for next time.

Now I'm off to set the rear toe. Thanks again!