I am doing a silly money rebuild on a pickup (I may have mentioned this ;)
and I was thinking about nice stuff to put on it. I have given the
suspension some thought and was thinking about neg camber brackets and arms.
What are the pros and cons of fixed and adjustable? I have a mate who has
adjustable on the back to make the wheels line up properly (cost cutting
isn't always cost effective :) and it has after a year got rusty adjusting
bolts. Should I be going for adjustable ones or fixed ones? Then there is
no question of rust but also no adjustability.
I can get some adjustable ones cheep at the minute but would rather get what
will make me happy in the long run.
Cheers
The Muffin Man
chris - 28 Sep 2003 00:44 GMT
> I am doing a silly money rebuild on a pickup (I may have mentioned this ;)
> and I was thinking about nice stuff to put on it. I have given the
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> The Muffin Man
When I did mine I put 1.5 negative bottom arms, uprated tie bars (std items
flex under heavy braking) uprated bushes at the front.
At the rear I fitted adjustable neg camber brackets, but was V unhappy with
them. Mainly because although they were adjustable up and down (camber),
they were not adjustable front to back (toe in or out). The effect was the
same as having the tracking out on the front. My rear tyres wore out V
quickly on the inside edge. I had adjusted the rear camber to 0 (no camber)
to keep the car balanced. In future I would probaby just have the hole in
the std outer radius arm bracket made taller by 4-5mm. I was more than
happy with the handling once it was sorted (165/60 12 falkens + spax adj all
round too). Was going round the outside of a few minis at trackday at
mallory park, plus easily outdragging them out of hairpin due to high corner
speeds!!
chris
Dave Yardy - 28 Sep 2003 10:22 GMT
> I am doing a silly money rebuild on a pickup (I may have mentioned this ;)
> and I was thinking about nice stuff to put on it. I have given the
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> I can get some adjustable ones cheep at the minute but would rather get what
> will make me happy in the long run.
I can strongly recommend the rear adjustable tracking / camber brackets - it
certainly sorts out the rear wheel alignment that will for certain be
wrong....
With the bolts a smear of copper grease or vaseline should do the job...
TTFN,
Dave
www.icklemini.co.uk
Dantiri - 28 Sep 2003 12:02 GMT
> I am doing a silly money rebuild on a pickup (I may have mentioned this ;)
> and I was thinking about nice stuff to put on it. I have given the
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> The Muffin Man
I put 1.5 fixed camber arms in the front. There are pros and cons to
negative camber. Here's what I encountered:
Pros:
-higher cornering speed, less understeer
-the steering wheel feels lighter, it is easier to turn it
Cons:
-the steering wheel feels lighter, makes it scarier at high speed and on
motorways
-any minor problem in the tracking of the front suspension is amplified. The
car is most likely to pull to one side if the suspension parts aren't in the
same conditions on both sides, which is common if you always drive the car
without passengers
I went back to standard camber after a few months, I prefer the handling and
it feels safer
Dantiri
-AD- - 28 Sep 2003 12:06 GMT
And Dantiri was sitting next to Elvis in the spaceship, which I thought
was kinda strange, but then they turned to me and said:
> I put 1.5 fixed camber arms in the front. There are pros and cons to
> negative camber. Here's what I encountered:
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> I went back to standard camber after a few months, I prefer the handling and
> it feels safer
The factory neg. camber arms are made for one specific purpose - achieving
reasonably sane camber on cars that have the suspension raised.
Using them on cars with normal ride height tends to lead to way too much
negative camber. Using them on cars that have the suspension lowered gives
really stupid geometry.

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Dave Yardy - 28 Sep 2003 19:48 GMT
> > I am doing a silly money rebuild on a pickup (I may have mentioned this ;)
> > and I was thinking about nice stuff to put on it. I have given the
[quoted text clipped - 30 lines]
> I went back to standard camber after a few months, I prefer the handling and
> it feels safer
That certainly sounds like the symptoms of fitting neg camber arms - but not
fitting adjustable tie-rods to sort out ane equalize the castor angles.
Ideally the neg camber arms are fitted with adjustable tie-rods and then it
can all be set up.
TTFN,
Dave
http://www.icklemini.co.uk
Steve - 01 Oct 2003 16:27 GMT
> I am doing a silly money rebuild on a pickup (I may have mentioned this ;)
> and I was thinking about nice stuff to put on it. I have given the
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> The Muffin Man
The original subframe is made without holes for the radius arm and then the
outer bracket is fitted and the holes are jig drilled. This means that the
hole in the outer bracket is potentially in different places on every
subframe. How can a fixed neg camber bracket define where the original hole
was to 'add 1.5 degrees'??
Answer - It can't.
The same applies to the front lower arms to some extent. Except here they
will give an extra 'xyz' degrees of camber from whatever you had before.
In the case of the front there are problems either way.
If you fit fixed lower arms, you may end up with different camber on each
side.
If you fit adjustable ones and set up equal camber each side, you may end up
with different length lower arms.
Either way it will affect the symmetry of the handling.

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Rgds
Steve
steve@dsnclassics.co.uk
www.dsnclassics.co.uk