Feel like messing with my alignment..

[WRXdan]

My car needs an alignment job soon...I'm in the mood to mess with the camber before taking it to the shop. What's the max negative camber I can run with the stock camber bolts? Could I get more than -1? What is a good shade tree mechanic way to measuring camber? I was thinking of making something out of scrap wood. It doesn't need to be perfect because the shop will straighten it out when I take it in. I have 8" wide rims on the car that somehow fit...I want to increase the camber and see how it carves.

[professor]

a friend of mine who auto-x's extensively measures caster with a framing square and a level. The framing square is long enough on the long side (24") to sit on the ground and pick up both top and bottom of the rim, and the level is used to make sure the framing square is level in both directions. A bench rule is nice to measure the distance between the rim and the framing square both top and bottom. After that its just a bit of fancy geometry. My buddy also puts a fake "butt" in the drivers seat by stacking weight, but that's pretty picky.

The car needs to be sitting on a reasonably level surface to begin with, and if you can find a nearly dead-flat concrete floor to work on, so much the better.

My dad doesn't even bother to have any of his cars aligned on the rack after restoring them, he does it all with metal bars, blocks, and rulers. He's resourceful and cheap !

[WRXdan]

a friend of mine who auto-x's extensively measures caster with a framing square and a level. The framing square is long enough on the long side (24") to sit on the ground and pick up both top and bottom of the rim, and the level is used to make sure the framing square is level in both directions. A bench rule is nice to measure the distance between the rim and the framing square both top and bottom. After that its just a bit of fancy geometry. My buddy also puts a fake "butt" in the drivers seat by stacking weight, but that's pretty picky.

The car needs to be sitting on a reasonably level surface to begin with, and if you can find a nearly dead-flat concrete floor to work on, so much the better.

My dad doesn't even bother to have any of his cars aligned on the rack after restoring them, he does it all with metal bars, blocks, and rulers. He's resourceful and cheap !

Can I adjust the camber bolt with the tire on? It seems the camber would be out of wack if I jack the car up, adjust, then set it down to measure. Or do I need to drive it after every adjustment? If I can adjuster without taking the tire off then I would be golden.

[Legacy777]

I know my garage is no way near level enough to get a good reading.


You need to adjust the camber bolt with the car's weight on it and then measure. To by quite honest, it's going to be tough to adjust the bolt with the wheel on, and the car on the ground. You're probably going to have to adjust it slightly put the wheel back on...drive around the block to get the suspension settled, and then check your measurements.

Far too much work IMO.....just take it to the shop.

[professor]

yep you'd definitely have to drive it around to re-settle, and should probably do that even if you can reach the bolt, for a final check

[ultrasonic]

I assume you are talking about camber in the front. It's not that big of a deal, especially if you are going to have a shop look at it eventually. Just max out the eccentric bolt on both sides, it should be somewhere between -.75 and -1.25 or so, unless you've bent some parts somewhere along the line.

When Ron at Axis installed the suspension in my Impreza wagon, that's what he recommended. A couple weeks later when I had a proper "shop" alignment I asked them to align to maximum with L & R matching. The numbers were very close when the car went in, and dead on when it came out.

I wouldn't bother going to the trouble to measure it. It won't be off enough to do any harm, especially if you are going to have a shop alignment soon.

[BAC5.2]

When I did mine, I jacked it up, took off the wheel, loosened the bolt and bottomed it out.

Measured to .5 degrees on each side after settling out.

I used my buddies tools to measure.



It's just a digital level with a homemade fork setup. You can set a reference level (the garage floor) and measure that way. The variance from 90 degrees is your camber (.6 degrees in that picture).

[BAC5.2]

Oh, it only took about an hour to do my camber and check my toe on both ends. The guy who helped me built his own alignment rack.