poor handling on highway

[GregWeld]

Originally Posted by Proforged

Since he hasn't changed his spindles or ball joints, the front end geometry is the same as stock.

At the minimum, I would recommend replacing all of your control arm bushings, the idler arm, pitman arm, tie rod ends, and center link. Tall Upper and Lower Ball Joints will allow you to run a more aggressive alignment, but you will likely need tubular upper control arms to get the positive caster you need for highway handling.

If you install tubular upper control arms and tall upper and lower ball joints, here are some alignment specs you can use:

Camber: -1/2 degree
Caster: +5 to 5.5 degrees
Toe: 1/16" total toe-in

If you can't swing the above components right now, bring your car back to get it aligned as close to these specs as possible in the meantime. Dialing in the camber and adding positive caster will help your handling situation some.

REALLY? New control arms per his post... and lowering springs... and you're saying nothing changed...

His first mistake was taking it to Les Schwab and not discussing these changes - and the second mistake was the tech not recognizing the changes and accounting for them.

Further - my guess is the steering box is "loose"... and the bushings are old etc. BUT the tech should have discussed all of that with him (and maybe did).

"Hunting rabbits" on the road is no fun - and can be downright dangerous when the roads get wet/slick. I say take it back to Les Schwab - and ask for a tech that understand suspensions not just how to read specs from a book.

Hope it gets better for you!