I stopped when I got +2½° both LH and RH.
That’s perfect. Dick Maury gave me the recommendation of 2.5 positive castor, 0.25 - 0.5 negative camber and about 1/16" toe in. I’ve been told that, within reason, more camber wouldn’t hurt. For the rear, 0.5 camber is nice to have.
More castor will not hurt, more camber will effect tire wear and handling. Need to quote it right please.
John in which order are you doing your settings.
Whoops, I meant to say more castor within reason, not camber. Thanks for catching that.
I just stopped at +2 1/4. I think I’ll leave the toe setting for another day.
Thanks
Anthony
I usually set toe with string (well, thread actually) but last time I used this instead:
The thread worked just fine but the laser looked so much more hi tech.
I have something similar and I think I will try it. I was going to use some light nylon string but I can see that the laser would allow me to project the angle of the wheels at a distance on a wall or a large piece of cardboard and get it set quite accurately.
Thanks for the idea.
Anthony
Cutting down the upper control arm brackets - they have little feet as I recall, and those can certainly be removed without stressing the piece.
I have a set of knockoffs Dad modified such that they have a steel plate on them: whomever wants’em, you get’em for the shipping!
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I have read this thread in its entirety a couple of times. I have visited this topic before ( on my 1970SII"E" ) and i am still not clear how we can get a negative camber on this car!!?? without any shims the camber can be taken down to close to zero.I do not see how you get a negative camber( meaning that the top of the wheel leans inwards at the top ), My car is not here for me to look at by the way!! Perplexed in ON.
Hi John, here’s my understanding of this - and feel free to correct me if I get it wrong. … If you are at zero without shims, you’re right, it can’t go any lower. However you can get it lower with modifications.
If you remove the two upper wishbone mounts and machine some material off of the mounting surfaces that contact the frame, maybe you can improve it to go a bit lower. Read John W above where he used his belt sander to do it.
I guess it all depends on your starting point, what number you’re trying to achieve and how comfortable you are with the modification. Using my car as an example, with all shims removed, I measure +0.24 deg Camber and that’s as low as it will go. Since every 1/16" shim equates to approx 1/4 deg Camber, to get mine in the negative territory I figure I would have to remove at least 1/8" of material. Maybe even a tad more. Looking at the mount closer to the firewall the bosses where the bolts mount to the frame look to be approx 1/4" thick. I wasn’t prepared to remove half of it. So I left it at +1/4 on both sides.
If your starting point is 0 deg, removing 1/16" of mount material to get to -1/4 makes sense to me.
I hope that helps.
Agreed.
I have no shims at all in the front and none in the rear (halfshaft shims). All 4 corners are the ever so slightly negative - between maybe (significant digits and other measuring errors limit a claim of absolute accuracy) > 0,25 degrees negative to a maximum of > 0.5 degrees negative. No real skill on my part, I just went for the most negative possible based on how our suspensions are designed without grinding. anything. I’m so happy I could spit. I’ve been doing my own alignments for a long time and understand the trig, but this was just luck.
Our Merkurs had nothing really to adjust and our 928 has more adjustments than a rental tux.
Anthony, Many thanks for the clarification.I think I would feel safer just leaving the camber where it is , 0.6 degree. I can consider the " grinding fix " later when I can see exactly how much" meat" I actually have available.
I just tried to measure the thickness where the bolt passes through on the front upper mount that I didn’t sand down. It’s hard to get in there with the shock and tire in place but I measured about 0.42 inches. I couldn’t measure the rear mount but it looks to be about the same.
Maybe some one has a pair of upper wishbone mounts off the car that they can measure and report back on.
I forgot to mention something about a pencil note I put ( date unknown ) into my XKE manual " Complete Official Jaguar"E", page J.18, Front Suspension, Camber Angle Adjustment a few years back . I quote “” negative camber----move lower fulcrum point outwards relative to the upper fulcrum point…Ray Livingston on J-L E Type Forum . Ray usually knows what he is doing and even has reached GURU status, but I am sure he teases us sometimes!
That’s all correct, but the lower fulcrum points are not adjustable. You adjust the upper points relative to the lower points. Moving the upper points in would have the same effect as moving the lower points out.
Like I said, too bad someone doesn’t come up with an eccentric bushing top and bottom. Or how about an offset ball joint. Just thinking out loud…
Sounds similar to mine, I stared out with 0.75 on one side and removed all 4 of the shims and ended up a camber of 0.25 where I left it. The other side was already 0.25 with 2 shims so I left them and didn’t touch it.
So I’ve been wondering why this happens. One side so far out from the other. I guess it’s all about the tolerances of the new frames I purchased and how careful I was when I welded in new floors, sills, engine frame mounts, etc.
Anthony
Because they were essentially hand built cars made up from a bunch of small stampings that were hand assembled in jigs, spot welded together and then leaded. The manufacturing tolerances then were nowhere near as precise as they are today.
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