<VV> Camber

[rbuckridge at comcast.net]

About camber, OK we have specifications, but these are really ballpark references. Engineering numbers, they had to pick a number and they picked that particular camber. 

How does your car handle? Are the tires wearing properly? Stable going down the road? If yes to all of these, leave it alone. 

But, after an accident or a rebuild, you will need to reset all the specs. The first thing is to measure everything. If you can't measure it, you have no idea if any of your work is any good at all. You need to be able to measure it. 

OK, you can measure it, now we get back to the same questions as before or what don't you like about the way the car performs? 

If you are racing your car or autoX on the weekends, different story. Now you need to be able to measure tire temperatures and pressures. These will tell you if you need an adjustment and in which way you need to go. The same principles can be applied to a street car. (Actually we just did this at NJMP, Thunderbolt circuit with a Subaru, street car on a race track.) 

Don't worry about the shim size. Two guys can use the same shim on each of their cars and will come up with two different sets of numbers. You need the numbers for your car and your car alone. 

Even for the engineers of the group, do we need a 1/16 or a 3/64 shim? We have manufacturing tolerances here guys, forget the size of the shim, take a stab at it and measure the results. You need to be able to measure everything, then measure it again. 

Roy - Bayshore 



On Aug 29, 2010, at 11:31 AM, Byron Comp wrote: 
> In his piece written for CORSA Tech Guide (Vol. 3, pp.27-29), Al Huston provides 
> a very detailed description of how to do a "Home Front End Alignment" on a LM. 
> In it he states, "(The early model Corvairs use shims at the upper A-arm 
> cross-shaft. I may recap this discussion at a later date with a follow-up on the 
> technique involved in adjusting a shimmed cross-shaft type front suspension but 
> I don't want to confuse the issue at this point.)" He doesn't do it in that 
> article; did he ever, or did anyone else? He does provide a table showing that a 
> 1/32" adjustment will move camber by .15 degrees; 1/16" = .30 degrees; 1/8" = 
> .60 degrees; etc. Would that formula also hold true for inserting/removing 
> shims? If not, why?