Wheel Camber Settings

Test ride tomorrow but ended up at:

left front: –0.8 degree ////// right front: –0.8 degree
left rear: –0.2 degree ///// right rear: –0.15 degree

Toe-in front between 3/64" & 1/16"
Rear Toe-in a little under 1/16" or something maybe.

Just for future reference and I reserve the right to be totally wrong: a 1/2 turn of the upper outer ball-joint is about 4-5mm. It appears that about one full turn seemed to give me about 0.2 to 0.3 of camber degree change.
 
Re: Wheel Camber Settings/Ride Height

Took the nose off and got the car leveled in garage. I have adjusted the ride height to "factory" settings.

Question: When I raise the vehicle off the ground and the front suspension goes to full droop - my left side frt. spring is very loose within the perches. The right side appears loose, but doesn't dangle like the left. The adjuster and perch is getting chewed up when the car is dropped and the spring hasn't centered itself within the adjusters/perch. Has anybody else seen this and if so are spring helpers an option. If I raise the adjuster to place the spring in slight compression when the car is lifted - won't ride height go up in proportion. I guess this may seem like a newbie question to some but am I missing something here. --- Thx, Shark

Some folks will tell you that adjusting the perches won't affect ride height. That hasn't been my experience. Adjust the perches has a proportional affect upon ride height...at least on my car it did.

You definitely don't want a spring moving around on the perch when the car gets light in the front over a bump or goes to full droop for some other reason...not good at all.
 
Re: Wheel Camber Settings/Ride Height

Some folks will tell you that adjusting the perches won't affect ride height. That hasn't been my experience. Adjust the perches has a proportional affect upon ride height...at least on my car it did.

Cliff - I have read the same and the physics of it make sense, but it seems taking up the slack raises the body height and has on several other cars I've owned in the past. I just finished my alignment so I won't mess with the springs at this point. I will order the zero-rate helper springs that Will mentioned and likely install them when the summer comes and I need something to work on. If I get airborne on the street I'll probably have other issues like trees on the side of the road..:shocked:
 
Just wanted to pass along some feedback on the Fastrax unit.

I bought one, but was finding the results were not making a lot of sense and didn't compare well with either the professional wheel alignment printout from a few days prior or the results from a digital level.

Turns out, the tool was out of true by about 0.8 degrees and the base was not truly flat; pressing on one edge or the other while setting level on the floor would cause the bubble to move by up to 0.5 degrees.

I wound up just using a digital level with a 2" x 8' steel beam that was laying around. The steel beam was placed behind the wheels to provide a base to set the digital level on and establish how much un-level the floor was. This correction was then applied to the digital level readout when it was placed against a 2' bubble level held against the wheel/tire. This method does have the drawback that if the tires have any bulges, it will throw off the readings, but the advantage is repeatable measurements that make sense and a readout accurate to 0.1 degrees.

YMMV.
 
Guys, I'm doing a setup up of my suspension at present and I used to use one of those $300 Digital protractor units unfortunately it died after a rat got too it , i found a really good app for my android phone up in the play store it's called Clino meter it gives you a bubble level and degrees to .1 of a degree and it's as accurate as the expensive digital protractors and is easy to calibrate, even has a lock function and best part is it's free and is always in your pocket.
 
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