I just installed an Ingalls camber kit on the front of my car this afternoon. This is the 2nd time I've installed one of these kits on my car. It all went to plan, took about 2 hrs. Well I put on the tires and took the car for a quick spin and it felt weird. Looked at the tires, and my caster's all fucked up. Both front tires are pointing outward slightly. Makes for spooky handling and fucked tire wear no doubt.

Anyways, what in the world could have caused this? I jacked the car up but didn't notice anything wrong. I'm getting the alignment done at a shop on Saturday so I'm pretty much saying fuck it till then.

10/23/2008 6:13:26 PM

more camber turns toe out?

on one of my cars less negative camber put the toe out, a ton. depends on geometry of suspension I guess.

10/23/2008 6:15:43 PM

alignment shop

10/23/2008 6:23:07 PM

^yeah going there saturday after going to Discount Tire for two new front tires. Some place they give a discount to, Brown's alignment shop on Atlantic I believe.

^^while that could be the answer, like I said I did this exact same thing to my car before and did not have this issue.

10/23/2008 6:28:43 PM

BTW,

Quote :

" Looked at the tires, and my caster's all fucked up. Both front tires are pointing outward slightly."

did you mean toe?

[Edited on October 23, 2008 at 6:31 PM. Reason : edit.. its adjustable. lol. dont the adjustable ones adjust both castor and camber/.]

10/23/2008 6:30:24 PM

damn you're right. Its my toe, not caster.

10/23/2008 6:38:14 PM

yeah, thats odd..

check your tie rods.

10/23/2008 6:42:51 PM

Nothing odd about it. Negative camber often results in toe being out of whack. Anytime you change camber it affects toe.

10/23/2008 7:07:54 PM

^I somewhat understand that, and am relived by what you say, b/c this did not happen the last time I installed the same camber kit on the same vehicle

10/23/2008 7:25:05 PM

Hey, if you think about it like this: if you go more negative on your camber, your wheel's pivotal axis (z axis if you will; about which the knuckle turns when turning) moves and rotates slightly inward. If the tie rods aren't adjusted accordingly, then you end up with a positive toe (toed out) relationship.

Same happens if you go positive on camber, except this time, the wheels will tend to toe in.

Toe out on the front wheels creates more stability with the downfall being that your tires kind of "scrub" when going in a straight line, and you have more rolling resistance. Toe in on the front wheels induces a tendency for the car to dart into turns, and your neutral stability decreases. the exact opposite holds true for the rear wheels. Neutral stability increases with toe in, and decreases with toe out, especially in turns.

10/23/2008 7:44:27 PM

I've always set it up for toe in for stability and toe out to pull into the corner. If you have toe in you turn the wheel and the inside front is still pointing straight.

10/23/2008 7:54:17 PM

Quote :

"Hey, if you think about it like this: if you go more negative on your camber, your wheel's pivotal axis (z axis if you will; about which the knuckle turns when turning) moves and rotates slightly inward. If the tie rods aren't adjusted accordingly, then you end up with a positive toe (toed out) relationship."

isnt that because of the caster built into the steering geometry?

10/23/2008 8:25:10 PM

Quote :

"Nothing odd about it. Negative camber often results in toe being out of whack. Anytime you change camber it affects toe. "

well i mean i can believe that. its pretty much all out of whack since he just threw the susp. on.

but from what i got it was completely shot. ive seen some bad camper issues, never really noticed much toe action.

but i dont doubt that its there. hah

10/23/2008 8:31:33 PM

Quote :

" isnt that because of the caster built into the steering geometry? "

Caster has almost nothing to do with it. If any of you want, we can sit down and I'll draw it out and explain the relationships between camber, caster, and toe.

10/23/2008 8:49:25 PM

well the front of the tires are sticking out more than the back (front to back of vehicle). If I just touch the steering wheel the car will start turning either way, enough to almost make a 90 degree turn. Firm grip on the wheel and its fine.

10/23/2008 9:27:10 PM

im curious to see how off the settings were/are

10/23/2008 10:38:32 PM

What is this n00b shit?

depends on what kind of camber "kit" you installed. If you put in camber plates on a mcpherson strut car, you're pulling the strut mounting point inward to gain negative camber. If your steering box is in front of the suspension, it'll toe out. If behind, it'll toe in. The spindle is pivoting at the lower control arm ball joint not only in the camber direction but also against the tie rod end in the toe direction.

If you have a double a arm/SLA type suspension with an adjustable outer upper control arm ball joint, its pretty much the same as above. however, lengthening the upper arm does reduce your negative camber gain under compression. The best way is to shim out the upper A arm at the inboard attachment point. This increases static negative camber while not interfering with camber gain at all. good camber gain is better than more static neg camber.

btw, none of these methods will effect castor unless youre using a camber plate and pull inward and backward to increase neg camber and castor.

Toe out = INstability, but quicker turn in.


I'd recommend a proper alignment, but you can always just put a measuring tape on the front and back of your front wheels. adjust both tie rods evenly until both distances are the same. zero toe. this assumes you had a symmetrical alignment before and your camber adjustments are the same as before.

[Edited on October 23, 2008 at 11:40 PM. Reason : alignment]

10/23/2008 11:36:16 PM

ease up with the "n00b" shit Look I get your point, I was just befuddled b/c this didn't happen last time, when seemingly everything else was the same!

I thought about tackling the tie rod adjustment myself, but I'm just gonna have the shop do it this afternoon instead. That way I know everything will be correct.

baonest, i'll post that info for ya.

[Edited on October 24, 2008 at 11:46 AM. Reason : k]

10/24/2008 11:46:06 AM

werd up.

BTW, ive never noticed bad toe from a camber change. this is visually though. never rode in it before the alignments

10/24/2008 11:53:43 AM

Okay my toe was pretty fuckered. While driving to the alignment shop if I went more than 30mph (or less depending on the surface) my tires squealed LOUDLY. LOL, I put my flashers on on any street where the speed limit was over 35.

At the shop they said my toe was so far off that it won't even register on the machine.

Anyway, once he adjusted the tie rods a little bit these were the measurements:

Front Left
Camber before/after - -0.7/-0.7
Caster before/after - 0.2/0.2
Toe before/after - -0.29/0.01

Front Right
Camber before/after - -0.9/-0.9
Caster before/after - 0.4/0.4
Toe before/after - -1.41/0.02

The rear was also slightly off, but I'm not gonna bother posting that.

10/24/2008 6:12:57 PM

so the only thing he fixed was the toe? hard to believe the camber and caster was spot on by eyeing it on an install.

but gg sir

10/24/2008 7:11:23 PM

I was pretty surprised too, it took a lot of elbow grease getting some of those bolts loose. Go figure that I didn't throw anything out of whack, lol.

10/24/2008 8:11:47 PM

the caster looks too low to me. whats the spec and tolerance?

10/24/2008 8:21:10 PM

Front wheel drive cars usually don't run nearly as much caster as rear wheel drive cars. They don't have to to remain stable. That's the biggest reason for caster is stability. More caster = more of a tendency to return to neutral. Also means more turning effort required.

10/25/2008 12:24:14 AM

^true, but equally as important, castor effects negative camber gain while turning. That looks low to me, even for a FWD. ~-3 is say is normal for a FWD car. RWDs are -6 to -7ish in general.

What car is this? What should the stock camber be? What type of camber kit did you install?

10/25/2008 3:14:41 AM

I think the stock spec for caster is just over 1 degree. It's not much. I think you can adjust caster a little bit by loosening the engine cradle bolts and shifting the cradle forward (for more) or rearward (for less). Otherwise there are no adjustments.

Could be his lower control arm bushings are worn the hell out and compressed. That'll decrease caster.

10/25/2008 4:19:02 AM

Ingalls camber kit was installed, as mentioned in this thread.

stock caster range (according to the print out) is 0.5 - 2.5. The guy at the shop told me thats its just under spec but that I wouldn't notice.

Stock camber range is -1.0 - 1.0

What car is this? Seriously?

[Edited on October 25, 2008 at 11:42 AM. Reason : k]

10/25/2008 11:41:34 AM

Interestingly enough, it would appear that fixing the camber + installing new tires has eliminated the vibration sometimes felt when accelerating in my car.

Although thought that just dawned on me is that the area where vibration was coming from had a tire that was recently patched and rebalanced....me thinks the shop that rebalanced the tire didn't do it right.


Hmmmmmm

10/27/2008 10:30:06 PM

Quote :

"Looked at the tires, and my caster's all fucked up. Both front tires are pointing outward slightly"

umm i think caster is an invisable messurment?

10/27/2008 11:17:24 PM

LOL

ivvasable

10/28/2008 12:53:09 AM

yes, an "ivvasable messurment" since no shop has ever been able to adjust caster, and since even though he was talking about camber, you can tell if the caster is horribly off due to the wheel position in the well, on a simple rwd setup, adjusting the entire upper control arm in or out changes camber, and adjusting one side moves the top of the wheel forward and back, so they are very closely related, and no, its a very obvious, simple adjustment, if you've ever done anything but change oil


btw, since you sold your pos scooty puff junior crafstman box, i'm assuming they let you out of the pit after 4 years and let you change air filters and wiper blades now?

[Edited on October 28, 2008 at 8:02 AM. Reason : still the same ol dumb fuk, i miss flaming made so easy]

10/28/2008 8:01:58 AM

Quote :

"Although thought that just dawned on me is that the area where vibration was coming from had a tire that was recently patched and rebalanced...."

really? REALLY? So it was possibly a patched tire... Really?


THE MOAR YOU [NO].



(SNL moment.. sorry Glad it's fixed

[Edited on October 28, 2008 at 8:40 AM. Reason : .]

10/28/2008 8:34:13 AM

a patch in a tire is easily balanced out. did you have a flatspot in the tire?

10/28/2008 9:15:45 AM

do you have a flatspot on your brain?

10/28/2008 10:36:37 AM

^^did you read this thread before posting the first time?

the patched tire was balanced after being patched, so its really not a duhhhhhh moment for me. More like the shop that did it fucked up the balance.

10/28/2008 5:53:33 PM

so how do you know its the patch? heavy spot in tire, valve stem,

Quote :

"^^did you read this thread before posting the first time? "

i did yes. im really not being a dick hear.

do you have sticky weights, maybe weigh got slung off, i guess it doesnt really matter cause you are getting new tires anyway. so hope that will help

10/28/2008 6:32:48 PM

^okay, i apologize, but something you said didn't make sense if you read everything.

The patched tire is history. I said the vibration went away after getting the new tires. I'm sorry if it wasn't implied enough that the patched tire is gone.

10/28/2008 6:57:37 PM

i gotchya man. my bad

10/28/2008 7:00:34 PM

Quote :

"it would appear that fixing the camber + installing new tires has eliminated the vibration"

it was very clear to everyone else that can speak english

10/29/2008 8:01:46 AM