Since I lowered the front of my car its been pointed out by a mate that, my passenger wheel has more camber than my driver side, what I noticed is when I removed the springs, when I unbolted that upright brace that bolts through the engine bay,my driver side had 3 spacers/ shims between the brace and where it bolts to, and the passenger side had none, can anyone tell me if there should maybe be at least 1 on the passenger side? Maybe someones stuffed up when putting the front end back together?

Each car is different and requires more/less shims.
If they were set correctly from the start there shouldn't be anything to worry about.
Now that you've lowered the car your best bet is to have them reshimed.

I've seen many cars that only have one camber kit - usually just longer bolts to take more shims.

There are some arguments that you only require 1 camber kit for the common car, that is because the road has camber for water run-off.


I had an astonishing amount of shims when I changed my camber kit.

 

 

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Last edited by Krytox on Sun May 13, 2012 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

is the wheel angled in-towards the motor,or out towards the guard?

its in towards the gaurd which is negative?

Wow! How many Is that 10 or so?

depend,the shims come in 4,3,2,1mm sizes and a lot of them,mines 16mm each corner and still -1 deg camber.

Years ago, when I installed the camber kit, I was advised to install 17.5mm shims all round.

Because its far easier to remove them when adjusting than adding.

its in towards the gaurd which is negative?[/quote]
wrong,in the photo the shims are to correct negitive-push the wheel out straight,making the arm longer,if the wheel is leaning towards the outer guard it positive and you cant shorten it.i had it on the ltd,turned out to be bent lower arm and upright\axle,looking at the lower arm it bent up and shortened it,cant see it in the upright but the wheel alignment gear showed it up,all fixed up.had me playing for awhile.

My EF is like that - I recently replaced the shim adjustable kits with Nolathane bolt adjustable ones hinges - which are still adjusted a lot more on the passenger side than the driver's side - but with the shim type hinges, yep I had a big stack under each of the driver side ones and maybe 1 medium one under front passenger one and 1 thin under the rear.

To compare what your camber ACTUALLY is between the two sides, get a plumbob and check it with a small steel rule on a level floor - ie. hang the bob so the bob and string are clear of the lower tyre bulge and measure from edge of top of wheel rim to the string and then from edge of bottom of wheel rim to the string - subtract the lower measure from the upper measure and you have a figure for camber lean of the wheel height. Do this on both passenger and driver side and compare the figures.

You need to make sure you're doing this on a level floor of course.

I've done my current complete wheel alignment myself using a block of wood that fits across the flat of my wheels inside the lip, 1.5m length of curtain rod, spirit level, plumbob and steel ruler. That's setting toe, both cambers, AND both casters - including making the passenger caster slightly more than the driver side to allow for road camber. The car drives, feels and handles GREAT - ie. nice weight and feel that's consistent at ALL speeds - good directional response - no strange pulling (even plowing thru water across half the road!! ) - and the tyres are not showing any peculiar wear. This is a better result than I've ever had from a paid for alignment!!!! I'm chuffed

OH! - my point is that there's different adjustment between left and right even when the cambers are actually the same - so the difference must be chassis shape / angles / location of the crossmember etc. - and you simply can't rely on looking at the wheels and judging what the actual camber is by eye.

It is called Staggered Camber, and Staggered Castor....this helps to STOP the car running down the Camber of the road, so the car goes straight.

The amount of difference the OP and myself are noting is way more than can be explained by that. AND - keep in mind we're talking about the top arm physical shimming - not necessarily the final result at the wheels - as I said, in my case the final camber at the wheels was aok regardless of the radical difference in shimming between the two sides. It's body / chasis irregularity - nothing hard to understand about that!

Deliberate staggering is spot on - it's exactly WHY I set mine with more positive caster on passenger side than driver side - and I have a tiny bit more camber on the passenger side than the driver side as well - but not much - in the height of the wheels it's 10mm neg on the driver side and 15mm neg on the passenger side (to get that, my rear passenger side adjuster is just about bottomed - which reflects what was happening with the shim type hinges too). I've got toe set to about 8mm minus total (ie. 4mm per side) at a position 1.5m ahead of the wheel's centres. I have 255/60R15 GT Radials and "Low" King Springs (ie. she's std XR6 height).

With that, it's response to road camber is excellent - it tracks very nicely and without drama regardless of the shape of the road camber in either direction and doesn't tug or pull excessively with surface irregularities or even water - you can FEEL it all for sure but it doesn't actually pull - the feel and weight is excellent and it handles like a dream with very nice turn in and response to increasing or decreasing load thru corners - the "feel" is beautiful so controlling the balance of the car even with everything hangin out is a breeze. And I'm getting no shouldering wear or anything else untoward - like I say - MUCH better than any shop alignment I've ever had!! I can't believe it and had thought I was wasting my time even trying all this with a plumbob etc. - I did it just to get by until I got round to booking it in.

In technical terms I determined thru trig that the setback on my ground markings for the factory 3-4 degrees caster needed to be something like 45mm - I prefer slightly lighter feel so I ended up with 36mm on driver side and maybe 43mm on the passenger side (book specs DONT make allowances for stagger settings - tho I suppose you could assume that's implicit in the +/- tollerances...). With the width of my tyres the steering weight is VERY sensitive to caster - something no aligner I've gone to in over 25 years has ever come to grips with but as I've discovered is actually a piece of piss to sort out.