Camber Shims **

Adjusting the camber I found 4 pairs of .030 shims on the driver’s side and removed them all – that took it from +¼° to -¼°. That was easy enough.

Now on the passenger’s side I started with -¾° and was expecting to add shims to bring it to -¼° to match the driver’s side but when I peered in I found:

Five shims on the forward bracket and none on the rear bracket. My questions:

Others have reported finding mismatched shimming here - is it safe to assume this is the handiwork of some PO or did some cars get this at the factory?

Is my best move to start fresh with an equal number of shims & just guess at how many it will need to get me to the -¼° I want?

I realize this will play havoc with the castor but hopefully that can still be adjusted to spec.

Looks like someone’s incorrect attempt to get some castor on that side.

Are you planning to do the alignment yourself or take to a shop? In either case you should always have an equal number of shims front and rear.

I’d start with two front and two rear on that side and see what you get.

If you are taking it to a shop that will get you probably close enough for them to take it from there.

Also. if you are taking it to a shop I found it helpful to remove the wheel well splash panels and cotter pins and I also made sure I could loosen the two pinch bolts on each upper A arm.
I’d start

John is absolutely right.

In addition to what he has said I’d suggest setting the threaded upper fulcrum shaft to the middle position as well. Then once you have the camber right you can adjust it for the castor. If truth be known the middle position is often where you will end up anyway for correct castor.

Thanks - that is what I thought.

This is strictly DIY and my time is free so trial & error is an acceptable approach.

The fulcrum shafts are already well-centered and castor (before I started) was similar side-to-side though ½° more than the spec.

Yeah I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing the wheel alignment myself. Apart from anything else I get it more accurate than the professionals.

I’ve done a fair number of cars over the years and consistently found that you can’t get a lot of negative camber from removing the shims - maybe a 1/4 of a degree at most, so seeing you have 5 shims, albeit in one location, and still have 3/4 of a degree negative is a revelation. Is your suspension set at the mid laden position when measured, and is the car perfectly level side to side? A second puzzle relates to using an equal number of shims on each bracket on each side. Everytime I’ve done that I’ve found that it was necessary to screw the upper control arm back until it was partially off the threads to get 2 1/2 degrees of positive castor. That tells me that maybe you are not supposed to have equal shims on each bracket - rather there should be fewer shims on the rear bracket. Problem with that is that it renders the control arm brackets out of square with the frame upright in the rear and the bracket in the picture frame in front. I’ve got no “right” answers.

This is not what the manual says.

IMO it is common to have more shims on one side than the other.

I am not trying to start a debate with this next bit – just documenting what I did, why I did it and the results I got.

Our story so far… undoing the brackets for the upper fulcrum shaft to adjust camber, I found 5 shims under the front bracket and 0 shims under the rear one.

In the end I followed the Service Manual which says “Remove or add an equal thickness of shims from each position…”. In other words, when adjusting the camber I retained the imbalance of shims that I found when I took it apart.

Here is why I did that -

  1. I could find nowhere in the manual that said the shims should be equal front & back, just that you have to add or remove equally.

  2. This is a fairly low mileage car and though I cannot prove it came from the factory with unequal shims front & back – there is a certain Gestalt to originality. These parts just looked to me like they have never been messed with (perfect matching shims, bright shiny bolt threads, the way the factory bent over cotter pins, etc). This is, of course, subjective.

  3. In many threads on this subject owners have reported finding unequal shims front to back - this is commonly attributed to prior castor adjustment by a shop more used to Ford F100s than the nifty threaded upper fulcrum shaft on an E-Type - but perhaps not.

  4. The upper and lower fulcrum shafts on mine are definitely parallel - easy to see by peering down with a flashlight and a light-colored surface under the car. If the shims had been used to tweak caster (5 shims in the front, 0 in the rear) one would expect the shafts to no longer be parallel.

  5. The threaded caster adjustment is nicely centered:

  1. Castor was and is close to correct.

From the above I have formed the opinion that the factory used shims as needed to initially set the castor as well as camber with the expectation that future castor adjustment would use the threaded upper fulcrum shaft.

In the end my adjustment got the numbers right and a brief ride suggests all is well.

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good for you.

My left suspension has four shims front and 0 shims rear.

I don’t have the FR handy at the moment to check that

Ultimately, it matters not the number and placement of shims, IF the wheels all point in their proper direction, and are the same, side-to-side.