Thor Forums

[Harvard]

Originally Posted by jabrabu

I have a Chateau 31E. I want to improve its driveability/stability, and the first item was to get an alignment done. I've read on many forums that increasing caster to at least +5 degrees helps a lot, so I was ready to have caster/caster sleeves installed and a custom alignment done. It turns out that caster was already at +4.9 left and +5.0 right, so pretty good. Camber was also close to zero, so good there as well. So I didn't have the caster/caster sleeves installed.

Toe was out quite a bit. It was .71 degrees toed out (which is equates to almost 3/8"). I have experience racing cars, and I know that toe-out can make a car twitchy and less stable. They adjusted it to .07 degrees toe-in. I expected that going from significant toe-out to a little toe-in would help a lot, but driving it home didn't feel much different. (It wasn't that bad to start with, but I know it can be better.)

So I'm wondering if I should leave it there or increase toe-in a little bit more. I'm thinking that about 1/8" total toe-in might be good for stability, but I don't want to increase tire wear or hurt fuel economy. Anyone here have any experience with this?

Thanks.

Sorry about being a little late here. IMO it would do no harm to add more +caster to your existing +4.9 and +5.0. I am assuming your 31 footer has a slight fore/aft nose up attitude which would explain the existing high caster angles. Just saying...