1982 Dodge Rampage w/ Shelby front end & '89 2.5L Turbo-I engine

They are very toe sensitive.

Unless the bushings are shot, the control arms bent or the frame somehow damaged; the toe being out will cause it to pull or wander.

they are known for having issues with ruts and crowned roads, especially with wide tires.  Combined with the torque steer it can get interesting, so you learn to automatically tighten your left arm while driving and accelerating (especially with manual equipped cars).

Fix the camber and then the toe, they are interlinked and it will drive you to drink going back and forth with that.  A camber or angle finder app for your smartphone will help with the camber.  A tape measure for the toe.

Stefan said:

They are very toe sensitive.

Unless the bushings are shot, the control arms bent or the frame somehow damaged; the toe being out will cause it to pull or wander.

they are known for having issues with ruts and crowned roads, especially with wide tires.  Combined with the torque steer it can get interesting, so you learn to automatically tighten your left arm while driving and accelerating (especially with manual equipped cars).

Fix the camber and then the toe, they are interlinked and it will drive you to drink going back and forth with that.  A camber or angle finder app for your smartphone will help with the camber.  A tape measure for the toe.

"Pull or wander"- yeah, that's pretty much the perfect description of what it does at the moment. I definitely have to keep my left arm tight when at any kind of speed.

Right now the camber is set to 'as far negative as we could put it when we swapped on the race tires at the Challenge', so I probably need to put that back somewhere near neutral (or at least even) and then see about adjusting the toe. I have one of the camber apps for the phone, and should be able to use the curtain rods to check and adjust the toe.

I didn't get as much done cleaning up in the garage last night as I would have but only need a bit more time to get to the point where I can try and fix the alignment.

To set the toe at home, you really need a set of toe plates.  You can make your own,  just a flat plate that goes over each front wheel.

     Mine have a notch cut out at the bottom, front and back, for the tape measure.

        When you adjust camber it will change the toe.  Both front spindles come closer together, and that will change the toe.

Doing some reading on the TD forums, I'm also curious if part of the problem could be the axles... I still don't know exactly what axles they used when they did the swap, and if they didn't use the right ones (the '89 Omni axles) it could be making the torque steer worse. Also, not properly centering the engine could as well- and given how stupidly the transmission mount was installed when I got it, I'd be wholly surprised if that had been properly done either (will have to look up how exactly to do that...).

Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to have time to swap axles before I'm supposed to head to Louisville tomorrow, so will have to see what I can do in the way of adjusting the camber & toe so it's a bit more neutral.

Anyone have the recommended alignment specs for the L-bodies around?

Got some work done before coming in for dinner. Passenger side front wheel was 1. Very positive on the camber and 2. Probably a bit loose and able to shift around. So, tightening up the bolts and pushing it asbestos negative as I could should help. But... it’s still slightly positive, and the driver’s wheel is about where it should be around -0.8. 

I’m also fairly convinced that it doesn’t have the appropriate axles, as there isn’t much play on the passenger side one- which also may play into it not wanting to go any more negative. 

Also got the preliminary measurement for toe, and the front of the tire is 1/4” wider, so I need to extend the tie rods a bit.

Fiddled some with the camber bolt on the bottom of the passenger strut and have it closer to zero, and adjusted the toe a bit so it’s hopefully also closer to zero. If nothing else the passenger strut bolts being tight should improve things. 

Also decided to err on the side of comfort and hooked the cooling system back up to the heater core. I’ll just have to keep an eye on the temps and have extra coolant along. 

Also adjusted the exhaust a bit since part of it was hanging down a bit low. 

Hopefully tomorrow isn’t a disaster...

Lots of informational tidbits:

It's impossible for the caster to be very far off unless you have a bent control arm, subframe, or bad control arm bushings. There is no adjustment for it from the factory and no way to install anything wrong to throw it off.

Torque steer over and above 'normal' is usually down to engine mounts. The side mounts can do a lot of nastiness under WOT accel. Even if you are only making 200lb ft of torque (stock boost), that X 1st gear X diff ratio = ~2000lbft, so if you can imagine putting a torque wrench to the trans where your axle comes out and turning it counterclockwise to the tune of 2000lbft, that's what's happening when you floor it. Luckily, with an automatic this is even easier to visualize because all you have to do is put someone in the cab and have them powerbrake it (wot!!) in gear while you watch the engine movement. At stock boost, a few seconds of this won't hurt anything and may help your understanding of what's causing the 'extra' torque steer. Another thing that could cause torque steer? Bad control arm bushings..

To get a sense of how your control arm bushings are letting your suspension geometry change in their current state, you can do a couple of things.  Have an assistant roll the car down the driveway at walking speeds and applying quick stabs of the brakes to see how far your wheels might move under braking. If you have a good parking brake, just cramming on the parking brake and putting it in drive and goosing the the throttle a bit will let you watch how much the wheels are allowed to move under accel.  Excessive fore/aft movement caused by loose rear bushings on the control arm can cause the wheels to gain toe angle unevenly under throttle and 'steer' the car. 

These cars have a ton of camber adjustment from the factory. If you can't get one side to go negative it may very well be because that axle is bottoming out. If you loosen the front motor mount bracket to the core support (holes should be slotted), the whole engine/trans can be shifted side to side in the engine bay. I usually do this with a prybar shoved into the trans mount area. To 'center' your drivetrain you should remove both axle nuts and shoot for the same amount of 'play' or plunge travel available on both axles. If an axle runs out of plunge travel and bottoms out the inner joint during suspension compression, it can actually explode the inner cv housing over a pothole/dip.

The axles themselves won't cause torque steer when failing. The outer joints will cause clicking under turning and the inner joints will cause a side-to-side 'wiggle' or shaking under hard acceleration.  Unequal length axle setups in general contribute to torque steer because the longer axle acts like a torsion bar spring and stores and releases some accelerative energy in a discernible way, but that doesn't get worse from normal wear and tear. 

I don't know what wheels and tires you are running on the street but your race tires that i saw at the challenge give you massive scrub radius and scrub radius amplifies torque steer. If your street tires have 'normal' or close to zero scrub radius then they probably aren't contributing to the problem. 

The axles are an inch different and wouldn’t fit without requiring the suspension to be at max positive camber and the inner joints will be fully compressed, the suspension wouldn’t move and the joints would make nasty noises.

You were able to get it close to 0 or some negative for the Challenge, and there’s pictures showing movement so I’d say it’s good for length.

I posted the Shelby GLHS alignment specs earlier in the thread, but they are on TD if you can’t find them.

Had an interesting day with the Rampage... too late and tired to go into detail, but will later. 

Had an interesting and on the whole rather frustrating weekend as far as the Rampage goes.

The good:

1. The alignment work Thursday clearly helped. It's a lot more manageable now. Still has issue with pulling to the right under power but amusingly I managed (unintentionally) to align it such that it tracks straight when under power- but then want to go to the left when just coasting.
2. Found two 15" spare tires, a S-10 rear sway bar, and a solid amount of 3" exhaust pipe including 2 sets of flanges (which I'll be needing sooner than later...) at the junkyard and picked up 2 15" drag inner tubes reasonably cheap
3. Even with the tiny lawn tractor battery, it starts right up in 25-degree weather and warmed up pretty quickly (which was good, because there was front on the inside of the windshield...)

The bad:

1. The exhaust system does not want to stay on the thing. I has come off 4 times over the course of the weekend- and none of those times have been on bumps or anything I'd expect to cause the connections to come loose. At least my safety wiring the wastegate seems to be holding. Thankfully after the first time I left the bungee cord hooked up under it so if it did pop off it would just fall unto that and not be dragging on the ground.
2. Though I don't regret at all having hooked the heater core back up with how cold it was this morning, I really do need to replace it- it's not any fun having to top the coolant off each day.
3. I need to check again and make sure that the tires aren't hitting anything throughout their travel with the wheels on the ground- it really sounds like they're rubbing at some point in turns.

The exhaust really is pissing me off, but I don't think there's much I can do about it except change the connection at the downpipe to a flanged joint instead of the clamped joint. I tried getting a start on this yesterday, but ran into the issue that I couldn't break the nuts free on the exhaust- my impact wasn't moving them, and I don't have a vise big enough to hold the pipe securely while trying to break them free with a breaker bar. Lesson learned: next time, try and break the flange connections free in the yard when it's still (mostly) hooked up. I brought the pipes in with me to work and after work will run down to the Makerspace and see if their larger vises will work for the job.

Finally, something going a bit right- swung by the Makerspace on my way back from an appointment over lunch and was able to get the exhaust separated. Bad news is that I broke a stud on one of them, but the other one came apart just fine. Now I just need to get the necessary adapters/reducers to fit the flanges to the downpipe & exhaust and re-cut things to fit- and of course weld everything up. If I'm lucky I'll be running back out to near Louisville tomorrow evening or this weekend to pick up a MIG welding setup to do this with- though I can do the exhaust portion with the Makerspace's MIG, I would have to pull off the downpipe and take it in to do it there.

I dont understand how your exhaust is separating. Is it not a stock turbo downpipe? Those DO have a bolted flange. 

In reply to Vigo :

The downpipe does bolt up to the turbo- since I’ve only got one downpipe though I’ve just been clamping whatever I was using for exhaust (the full muffled system for the street or the side-exit one at the Challenge) to where the downpipe is cut off (about 4-6 inches after the bend) under the car. 

Sounds like you need a better clamp. Are you using band clamps?  

Ditch the clamps and weld the system together.   Source a spare downpipe and unbolt the exhaust at the turbo.

Or use a flange or a v-band solution.

There is a good amount of force applied to the downpipe in that area and you'll constantly be fighting with slip clamps.

In reply to Vigo :

No, the U-bolt type. At the moment, the front end of the street exhaust is a 2.5" ID reducer that slides over the downpipe- can see if I can find a band clamp that will still work with the joint. Would be nice to not have to worry about welding the exhaust until I can get a mig to do the welding with.

eastsidemav forwarded this to me yesterday:

https://cincinnati.craigslist.org/cto/d/1983-dodge-rampage-prospectors/6394193271.html

Reaaaaally thinking hard on whether I want to try and get these. I would love to have a full parts car with intact body panels to repair the damaged ones on mine- but a) doing so would be a LOT of work, b) I'm not wholly certain that I could repair and flip the non-parts one such that I could zero out the budget and (probably most importantly) c) SWMBO would likely kill me for not only breaking the 4-car rule but doing so by TWO cars and not just one. Though if I could get the 2.2 turbo with them for cheaply enough and zero it all out it would be nice to have an essentially free Garret and another head (though I don't know if it would work on mine or not).

Would also give me another whole transmission I could pull the diff from at leisure and use to try and engineer a spool to swap in for the drags...

That Garrett isn't bad, though it will need a rebuild, a new cold side (or an adapter). the turbo exhaust outlet will be 2.25" instead of the preferred 2.5" and the flange where it meets the exhaust manifold will need to be ground a little to fit the intake. Check out the T2 conversion info on Gary Donovan's Dodge Garage website.

The exhaust manifold, turbo and head can all work as spares with a little work (cam gear is different, exhaust manifold and turbo need to be clearanced to fit the later intake).

The automatic will also work, just double check the flexplate as some early cars had 3-bolt converters and later cars had 4-bolt.

Having spares to prepare would be a good thing since you could port the exhaust manifold and head, prep the automatic with a manual valve body and a welded diff, rebuild the Garrett with the proper parts (2.5" exhaust outlet, T2 style cold side), etc.

There is no need for spool once you are running actual drag slicks, and you will need to if you upgrade the power. My 09 Challenge car with a turbo 2.5 would spin the tires in 3rd gear (5spd) on street tires. My 16 Challenge Caravan with 2.5 turbo weighs a bit more and runs taller tires so it would only spin 3rd over road undulations. Still, there is no world where street/non-drag tires will remotely work while drag racing a modified 2.5 turbo dodge.

In reply to Vigo :

I will have drag slicks for next year (and likely drag fronts on the back), I’ve already got a start on picking things up. 

So on the way home yesterday I stopped and picked up a band clamp, and went to use it to put the street exhaust back on the Rampage... and ended up having to re-do all but one of the exhaust mounts including re-welding the one isolator hanger. -_-

BUT... the exhaust is back on the car, hopefully much more solidly and permanently. If nothing else, the band clamp is a lot longer than the previous connection, so even if it doesn't hold tight it will be much more difficult for it to slip off the downpipe.

I also messaged the guy selling the Rampages & the 2.2 turbo motor to see what kind of deal could be worked out for everything. I'm more and more leaning toward trying to sell the Grand Cherokee that I've been fighting with for some time now with little progress which would at least give me another vehicle slot- and I think knowing that I'd be pushing to flip the titled Rampage ASAP and then be largely stripping the parts car one might get me SWMBO's blessings to get them. If I can get everything for the $500 he's asking I would HOPE that I could sell the titled Rampage for at least that much with it fixed up a bit so I would have the untitled one and the engine for zero budget hit.

A lot of 'ifs'.... but we'll see what happens.

Yeah, please don’t tell your wife I’m the one who sent that link to you.  I don’t want to find out if she has a “kill” command for the dog.

In reply to eastside Utah Johnny Montana :

Oh, she already knows (well, assuming she remembers...). :P

In reply to Ashyukun :

I’m a dead man.

In reply to eastside Utah Johnny Montana :

Naw, if she were going to kill you for anything car-related she would have done so long ago as she knows that you're the one who got me into the Challenge in the first place.

Besides- if I can sell the Jeep for what I pay for the Rampages and she knows I'm actively working to fix and flip the titled one it shouldn't be a problem (if the guy with the Rampages even gets back to me...).