Toyo Proxes T1 sport in factory size. The car doesn't feel settled in the road it wants to pull in different directions as the road changes. Steering response is sharp, no play side to side in the wheel. I can drive my wife's Sonata sport with one finger on the steering wheel and steering is super solid but in the vette it's like you have to keep a good grip on the wheel because it can pull left or right when there are slight changes in the road. When turning right and going over rough road I feel something in the front end that I would describe as loose. My mechanic drives a c5 but only as of recent. I believe the alignment specs were the factory specs. Also the car is lowered on stock bolts. All the way in the front and two threads exposed in the rear.

 

Assuming you don't have any extreme negative caster settings the pulling might be due to the toe adjustments. When I had my 97 with the run flats on it I would be driving to work on a road the county did a cheap repaving on. They would take a paving machine and cross back and forth across the highway hitting the pot holes. I would be driving along at 50 mph and literally would go from the right side of the road to the left and back without ever touching moving the steering wheel. Wide tires are susceptible to that and then make them run flats and the car would follow every irregularity. After a lot of alignments and even taking the dealer mechanic along with me on the drive to work and him taking the car back to the shop never got it straight. Then I had him add a few more hundredths of toe in front and back and the car settled right down. If your front toe in is 0 or a little out see if making a single flat turn inward on the front tie rod ends helps. If it does then add another single flat turn in the same direction. The tie rod ends have 6 flats and one flat adjusts toe by about 1/32 of an inch.

Huge amounts of negative camber will also make the car want to follow every rut it comes upon.

Here are the factory settings for the C5Z:



Notice the tolerances permitted. This allows a mechanic in any shop to do a green and go alignment on the car. Each time they do it you can have a huge variance from one side of the tolerance to the other with totally different behavior and each alignment was to factory specs.

You need to stick a lot closer to Service Preferred and then choose the camber setting you want without any tolerance and the toe setting you want without any tolerance.

The other thing to be aware of is the sign on the toe readings. GM defines toe in as positive and toe out as negative. That is sort of a standard but isn't always followed. Some people define toe out as positive and toe in as negative. It is imperative that the mechanic knows you want toe in Vs toe out and when I take an alignment into a shop I write toe in and toe out to be clear on what I want. Simple thing to worry about but we don't want Struther Martin's comment in Cool Hand Luke "What we have here is a failure to communicate". The Pfadt settings so prevalent on the forum assume toe in as Negative instead of Positive.

I don't know what you want to use the car for but the tire choice seems to indicate boulevard cruiser Vs track rat so I would choose a -0.7 or less camber along with the +.04 front toe in. I would also recommend rear toe in Vs the toe out shown in the GM spec. Instead of -0.01 degrees toe out I would make it +0.01 degrees toe in. The toe out isn't a lot but toe in will make the car more stable. Toe in measurements can also be tricky since some machines don't list degrees, some list inches and others list mm's. Here is a conversion chart showing how to convert between degrees and inches based on the diameter of the wheel the alignment machine head is attached to. The conversion to mm's from inches is just a factor of 25.4 mm to an inch.



Bill

 

Check the wheel bearings and the tie rod ends, even the slightest bit of play will cause the car to be "darty" and wander around

 

I ordered Prothane poly sway bar bushings front/rear, Moog outer tie rod ends and Moog sway bar end links front/rear tonight. I will prob also order the control arm poly bushings too, haven't made up my mind on those. I will check ball joints and wheel bearings this weeknd. Also ordered a new intake manifold gasket set because I have to change my oil press sensor also.

 

Is the steering rack bushing just on one side, or both?

 

1 side

http://dougrippie.com/products/drm-s...ack-bushing-2/

 

I noticed that particular one is aluminum, would a poly be good also?

 

DRM also offers Delrin in the drop down which is what I would recommend, Delrin offers some cushion but is stiffer than poly.

 

What PSI are you running? Feel is very subjective, so you might want to have someone else drive your car to give you a second opinion. All of the responses above are great places to look.

This sounds like alignment to me as well.

 

I believe 32psi all around cold.... I've had two separate alignments done at different places with the same results. I asked the guy the other day that did my last alignment what specs he used and he said Factory.

 

Factory Z or factory base? Did you get a print out? You should.
And you believe 32? I know exactly what I keep mine at. It is 30 cold, 32 might make your car a bit more "darty". Try 30.

 

Factory Z specs. He has a C5Z also and he is well aware mine is a Z06.....Unless he just made a mistake which is possible. And yea Im not home to double check but Im pretty sure I put 32psi in them last time. I will give 30 a try.

 

The rear should be toe'd IN, alot of alignment guys don't get what that is. If the rear is toe'd out or zero it will drive like crap

 

I got the car up in the air today and was able to check things out. I think I may have figured out where my issue is. All bolts were good and tight. The tie rod end bushings looked pretty rough on both sides and the sway bar end link bushings were worn also. All control arm bushings looked fine. Ball joints and wheel bearings are fine. Saw signs of fluid on the bottom side of both steering rack boots