Mr Cobra, or may I call you AC?
I haven't messed with the alignment of #6018 yet, so I have refrained from answering.
The traffic on the PIBB this weekend is slow, I imagine everybody's busy. I'm home doing laundry myself.
Mark's advice is good. The settings he gave you are straight out of the owners manual, page 69.
There are owners among our ranks who race their cars & have alot of experience with various suspension settings, and of course, the vendors will have dealt with these questions many many times, and will have lots of invaluable advice for you. Don't think your local alignment guy will know what the heck to do with a Pantera. I shudder to invision a Pantera up on the average tire store rack, eeek!
Your alignment needs will depend alot upon your use of your car & the state of your chassis & wheel combo (stock or modified).
Dallara originally designed 6° positive caster into the front suspension, but Ford reduced it to a dismal 3° (Pre-L) in order to slow down the response to driver input at the steering wheel and to replace the possibility for oversteer with the earlier on-set of understeer. The move to Goodyear Arriva tires in late 1972 was accompanied by a further decrease in caster, to 2-3/4°.
There is minimal provision for adjustment of the front suspension caster. It is for the biggest part built into the chassis. If the chassis is adjusted to sit level the caster should be 2-3/4° to 3°, unless your Pantera is a push-button version or a European version.
2-3/4° to 3° of caster is not enough for stability in a sports car with such a low amount of weight over the front tires. It also diminishes the amount the front tires “lean” into a corner when they are turned. If you wish to set up the suspension for better stability, for quicker and more precise response to driver input, for improved front tire “grip” in corners (less understeer), and to restore the balance originally built into the chassis, you may want to consider increasing the front caster (reversing Ford’s changes to the front suspension). The most common method to increase front caster is to modify the upper front control arms to allow more caster adjustment. The car responds better to 4° - 6° of positive caster. The caster setting is sensitive to the width and diameter of the tires, air pressures, chassis ride height settings, etc.
To slow the response to driver input and encourage the earlier on-set of understeer Ford reduced front camber from -1/4° to 0° while they increased front toe-in from 0” to 1/8”. I'd recommend at least a minimum amount of toe-in up front (1/16") even if you set the camber at -1/4°. Ford did not alter the rear camber setting (-1/2°) or rear toe setting (about 1/8" to 3/16") because they did not want to do anything to reduce the grip of the rear tires in corners.
Toe is dependent upon camber, the purpose of toe is to zero out the forces of whatever camber setting is dialed in, plus to give the car straight line stability. Toe is set properly when the car does not veer on smooth-level pavement and when tread wear & tread temperature are both even across the width of the tire.
On a high performance sports car, tire pressure is also a factor in the suspension settings, and has similar effects on the chassis as toe adjustment.
George
