I already know my Coupe handles fairly well, but I was sure I could get better turn-in with a little more negative camber at the front.

So, I've bought myself some Eibach camber bolts and a camber / castor gauge

I've measured my camber and found that I have over half a degree difference between sides, and that my driver's side has zero degrees of camber.

I'm pretty sure that a degree of negative camber on both sides will make a load of difference

Should be able to get it done on Thursday when the car is at Motormech for some other bits & pieces.

Once I've finished tinkering, I will be hiring the gauge out to anyone that wants to check their own car

Nigel excellent add on. I did it a year ago. Just for comparison how much did you pay for camber bolts. I paid approx GBP 60

Rui

Hi Nigel, I've done this mod myself. Have messed around with the settings and have found 1 deg negative with std toe in best. I'm currently running this set-up

Eibach/Bilstein
Upper and lower braces
New wishbones
New Top mounts
Camber bolts

Cheers Tim

ive been posting in another thread about handling & more or less have done the full suspension package apart from the arb,s....i don't do any track days, but i do like to DRIVE the coop when the opportunity arises : :D...i cant believe how more planted it feels now, i,m putting off the arb,s at the moment, but the big question for me is....is it going to make even more of a difference, & are they difficult to fit ........jings I'm going to have to stop sometime
sorry to detract from oringinal post.....Jim

Jesus.. You're in for a shock Nigel!
I have -1.25deg camber (which was max for H&R bolts), works well for both road and track.

Be sure to use the correct torque to tighten them, I've read about snapping camberbolts (probably too tightened).

Nigel - with your suspension go for -1.3 neg on the front. It made the front end on mine bite a lot harder when I was on the same suspension. You may find that when it does dig in the car can feel a bit like it 'flops' onto the front outside wheel. You will certainly have to have the front dampers set to hard IMO when you want handling. When I got to this stage I had the choice of a whole suspension change or adding an uprated front ARB to go with the rear one, but then I'm pretty fussey.

You have to drop the fuel tank to do the rear arb. Speak to Julian at Balance motorsport:

http://www.balancemotorsport.co.uk/

..and undo the ventilation hose and the exaust heatshield.

oh yeah, forgot about my roll bars 22mm whiteline rear and dedra 4x4 front with uprated drop links... Did make a hugh difference... cheers tim

just for info my race car has -4 on NSF, -3 OSF

and the rear really could do with neg camber about -2.5 as I wear only 2 inches of the outside of the rear tyre. Get some neg rear and you'll be flying. I have many idea of the rear, and very good contact who could do the work.

Nigel, if you ever DO fit the camber bolts, ALWAYS fit them in the UPPER hole, else they may shear in the LOWER position, all about leverage.

Also, make SURE that you use the CORRECT torque value, as they are an M10 shank on them.

I have the correct torque rating (55 lb-ft) and I clearly remember DrFrag's problem with a snapped camber bolt, so I'll definitely remember to fit in the upper hole.

Rich - I assume any rear camber adjustment is permanent and done through eccentric bearings for the rear radius arms? If there's a way of playing around with camber adjustment at the rear, I may be interested.

While you're at it, why not get the front sub-frame welded and fit a rollcage too. Uber stiff shell then

Looks like a nice bit of kit Nigel, remember the bubble camber gauges need a level surface to set it up correctly and you always need to adjust the toe setting after camber adjustment.

Zero to minus 1 degrees is standard for the coupe but running a little more and having them both set the same will give a nice improvement in turn in

Just as an aside. Although your handling with negative camber is going to improve - how will this affect tyre wear?

I know on the Uno T, I owned donkeys years ago, some negative camber was dialled in, but we had major issues with inside of the tyre rims wearing very quickly.

I think if you run negative camber, in order to preserve the inner edge of the tyre as best as you can, you may need to dial in a small amount of toe-out, or at least perfect toe...?

It really depends on how much you dial in. I did not notice the tire wear being too bad with -1.3. I'm going to go for -2 this weekend, but I dont do that many miles so i'm not that bothered if the tires wear fast.

I've been running -1.2 for about 2 years with no tyre wear issues. So long as the toe is set correctly and you dont go crazy with the camber it will be fine.

Si, at -2 deg, you will have less tyre contact on the ground when traveling in a straight line, be careful if its wet, you might also get tramlining unless you get a really accurate setup.
If the contact patches on the tyres aren't identical then it will fight you under acceleration, especially in a high power FWD car like yours.

Can't you run more caster on your top mounts to give you more camber when the wheels are turned ?

The Castor is already dialed in.

I'm going to play around with the camber a bit more. The top mount is not adjustable, so I'm going to slot the damper a touch so that I can go up to -2 with a camber bolt if I want to. I was also going to try some toe out...

I'll start a separate post to let you know how I get on.

Bloody hell!

How did I ever win the handling at TOTB with zero degrees on one side and half a degree on the other??

Its now set to about 1.25 degrees on both sides.

The handling has certainly changed - it torque-steers a bit now (although the tyres are well past their best). the steering also moves around a bit more as the cambered tyres follow imperfections in the road. So, its definitely a bit less "planted" in the straight-ahead position.

However, the way it goes round corners is just brilliant Turn-in is greatly improved and feel from the steering is much better.

The camber bolts are actually for an Alfa GTV, and fit the Coupe hub just fine. The only problem is the range of adjustment - I'm pretty sure they're made to correct excess negative camber from lowering, rather than for dialing in even more, so they are pretty close to their limit of negative camber. However, the bolts were just £10 off Ebay - new ones are about £20

Once I've re-checked the settings, I'll be making the camber gauge available for hire. I can either deliver it to Paul's at Motormech, who can do the work for you, or I can have it delivered to your door.

Glad to hear! Told you so!
That max setting of around -1.25 is the case with the H&R bolts too.
You'll get used to the little tramlining!

Nigel, did you adjust the toe settings back to standard after adjusting the camber ? Changing camber throws the toe out by miles so it probably will torque steer.

I'm on the same camber setting as you with no torque steer at all, just great turn in and grip

That's a damn good deal on them Nigel - my Eibach camber bolts were £60!

I'll get the tracking done today - its probably not as bad as I originally thought - its just that the steering wheel is feeling MUCH more 'alive' in my hands, although it never feels twitchy.

Alfa GTV camber bolts on Ebay for less than £20

bloody hell why do i think i may need/want these bolts

^ Same boat! Any opinions on whether it is worth it on a standard car?

definitely worth it, but probably only after you've done the far more obvious handling mod of decent tyres and a strut brace

ive just ordered myself bolts jings...i can hear the little lady not MORE stuff for your car
ah well that's married life for you

Humm, £20 for the bolts and my cars at Paul's on Friday - Nigel, how confident are you in your guage and would you consider leaving it with Paul until Friday? (happy to arrange delivery to you afterwards)

Graeme - as I said earlier in the thread, I'm going to be hiring this gauge out to fccuk'ers (also will be hiring out my Sykes Pickavant Code reader)

I'm perfectly happy to let Paul use the gauge - he spent a couple of hours using it with me on Thursday, so he's fully aware of how to use it.

If I was posting the gauge out, I would be asking for a holding deposit, but if its ONLY going to Paul's, I'm willing to forego the deposit.

For return delivery, you can post it (as long as its sent recorded, insured and signed-for) or you can deliver by hand (Coventry during the day or near Lichfield in the evening)

If you're heading back to Manchester, you could take a small detour from Birmingham and drop it in at my house.

I *might* even get you to leave it at Paul's for the next hirer

Nigel - how exactly do you fit the camber gauge to the car? Magnet onto the brake disc with the wheel still on?

I'm just confused as to how you might do it WITHOUT checking, jacking, removing the wheel, adjusting, refitting wheel, jack down and check again.

Ah... suppose you could check the camber of the car with the wheel on, jack up and remove wheel, check it again and subtract the difference when you make any adjustments.

I need to get out more..........

Nobbster, It needs to be done with the front suspension fully loaded with the weight of the car.

A simple way is to support the car under the ends of the wishbones, I used some wood to protect the wishbones and my axel stands, remove the wheels and put the camber gauge on the disc. That way its easy to adjust the camber without having to fight the wheel and makes for a more accurate setting.

Nobby - you've got it - process is as follows (Let's assume for this exercise that the wheels are at the standard 0.5 degrees negative , and we want 1.5 degrees negative):

1) Measure camber of wheels with the car on the ground
2) Turn the car round and measure again, in case the ground isn't level
3) write down existing camber settings
4) average the measurement between the two measurements at 1) & 2) above if they are different
5) jack up the car, take the wheels off
6) remove the hub top mount bolt and fit the camber bolts
7) loosen the bottom hub bolt so the hub can move in the suspension strut
8) locate the camber gauge on the hub - it fits over the centre nut and is held on with fairly strong magnets - it will stay on unless its knocked)
9) measure the camber
10) use the camber bolt to dial in 1 degree more negative camber than the current reading (which will probably be two or three degrees positive with the car in the air)
11) repeat steps 6) to 10) for the other front wheel
12) refit wheels, put the car back on the round and move it backwards and forwards to settle the suspension
13) measure camber (and turn the car around and re-measure if steps 1) & 2) above showed the ground isn't perfectly level
14) go for a drive, but be careful at your first corner, as you will almost certainly turn more than you thought you would - the difference caused by 1 degree is amazing - I love it

bloody hell

I've just been and got my tracking checked after setting the camber to 1.5 degrees negative

it was toeing in by 10mm (supposed to me 2mm toe out)

tyres were well scrubbed - just as well they were already worn out, as the last week of driving has finished them off

However, I now have great turn-in AND it now feels planted again

Told you it would sort it.

As you would expect, the turn in with 10mm toe in was quite sharp - now its back to the factory settings, its a little less pointy - I wouldn't mind trying 1.75 degrees camber, but I have a feeling the camber bolts will only give 1.5

Still, its miles better than it was, so I'm a happy bunny

Not sure how stable it would be in a straight line with nearly 2 degs camber, it would be a handful

Looking forward to you doing a handling event now just to see if running extra camber really makes the difference. I think it improves turn in and massively reduces turn in understeer but I still think the heavy front end of the coupe will wash out on a long high speed corner once all the weight has shifted onto the outside wheel.

When you dial in more camber you are also going to increase the toe in, so what you have to do is set the camber you want first.

I can now get up to 2.5 negative camber with using a bolt for adjustment.

The car is not setup right yet (corner weighting and ride height have all been done to death). But I'm not far away now....then all I have to do is play with the damping settings.

So to re-cap if i want to run 1.2 negative camber the toe in should be?

It should be as standard. But if you dont like the way that feels then you can have a fiddle with it.

I'm going to have a play with Toe out - 1/2 degree or so should be fine for starters.

standard being 2mm

Purchased some bolts from Nigel's e-bay link and had them fitted at Motormech on Friday - initial thoughts below (been taking it easy due to the weather and because its not properly tracked yet)

The initial turn in has improved massively, it feels like the car responds quicker and there is no hint of understeer

Through the corner the car feels totally planted and very pointy - it just goes where you want it to and already feels very precise (which will be even better come the weekend when its tracked properly)

In a straight line the car feels fine, with no tendency to follow imperfections in the road

My car's handling was good before, but these have made a significant improvement - for the cost, this has to be a 100% recommended improvement for anyone running a modified suspension set up

My setup - strut brace, Nigel lower brace, eibach/bilstein combo and a whiteline rear ARB. All my suspension components were refreshed less than two years ago.

Really tempted to get this done. Just wondering guys.. Each time i get the toe settings done, would the cambers need to be adjusted again?

Nice to see more people discovering the camberbolts!
Probably the most significant mod after lowering, especially since the camber seems to go positive in doing so.
I use -1mm toe-in from recommendation that it would tramline too much with lots of camber + toe-out. Seems to work fine but I should try 0mm toe-in I think.

No, the camber change the toe-in, but not the other way! if you see what I mean. So you do have to change toe-in as you change the camber.

Good to know that. What about when suspension components such as topmounts are replaced? I know that effects the toe settings but does the camber change in anyway?

That entirely depends on what top mount you use - but any will makes the settings deviate.

Thanks for that. Just got my bolts ordered

When you lower the car you add negative camber as the wishbone angle changes.

With a low car you will find that with the extra camber it will turn in sharply, but the car will then 'flop' onto the outside front wheel as the wishbone can't compensate and the shock has to do all the work. With a car on standard suspension I would think this would be very noticeable.

Have you started playing around yet Suba?

How do you dial in castor on the top mounts then?

Are they aftermarket items or can you do it with the standard jobs?

Also, how do you guage how much you've dialled in and how much would you want?

Sorry for all the questions but i'm happy with the engine now so i'm going to pick on the suspension- on the cheap

That's odd, I got positive camber? (from std -0.5 or what it is)

I'll be posting up soon - see my other thread on gaz, I posted on it this morning.

BTW - the handling stuff that I have been doing has not been cheap, I could have built a solid 450bhp engine for the same money I have spent so far.

Imagine the wishbone sits level with the car attached to one end amd the wheel to the other. If you lower the car end then the wishbone points upwards if you look along it from the car side, this makes the top of the wheel point inwards, hence negative camber, the greater the angle then the more negative camber.

Does that mean that with a lowered car (Eibach+Bilsteins), the camber should be more than -1.2?

Oh I know, I'm guessing (hoping?) it will be a lot cheaper in a few months to a year when it's all tried and tested kit though Well done for all the hard work though, I hope you get the set-up you want/ deserve

I never was all that happy with the billy eibach kit though. That GB kit sounds very tasty indeed

???? are you asking if with that setup the camber will rest at -1.2 without any adjustment? If so then the answer is no.

When I've finally got it setup right you're welcome to try it out and see what you think...

No i'm asking if -1.2 would be a good figure to go for as a balance between bite and tyre wear considering the car has been lowered.

Now there's an offer I may well take you up on

Something else I found interesting in your GB thread was the reference BMS made to the roll centre of the coop being low enough as standard. I've done a little research and found various articles on the subject but I require a more 'reader friendly' explanation

I read something about the difference between centre of gravity and roll centre being important and that this gap gets bigger as you lower a car, but it went all fuzzy there...
Here are a few bits I need clarification on;

1. Why is it a bad thing if it is too low and what effect does it have on the handling?

2. Can this new suspension set-up skirt around this problem by only dropping the car 20mm?

Yep that would do the job fine.

You really need to speak to Julian at BMS rather than me to explain all this - I've pretty much given him a free reign with a brief consisting of 'just make it corner well without it behaving like a pig in a straight line.' Here's my dumbed down version.

1. if you lower the car there are two things to think about:

A: The roll center - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll_center
B: The wishbone angle

The coupe is already a lowered Tipo with suspension that was not engineered with cornering prowess in mind - lowering it much further makes the wishbones point upwards, when you get lateral forces on the wishbones you then get excess movement in the suspension, which changes the roll center. (if you have a car with soft suspension what happens to the outside front when you lob it into a corner? - all the weight goes onto that tyre, and the car will loose grip with only one tyre doing the work.) Think about pushing a ruler into a wall with it at a right angle to the wall, and then doing the same thing with it at 45 degrees to the wall - then imagine the ruler is your wishbone.

2. I bloody well hope so! the best handling set up I have had so far was Koni / Eibachs with 1.3 neg camber at the front and an uprated rear arb with the dampers set to hard all round. The car was lowered 35mm. I got annoyed with this as though the turn in was much better the car would bite hard and then noticeably transfer all the weight to the outside front wheel, so the car felt very 'turn in hard, lift off to get it pointing the right way, then back on the power.' I wanted it to be more subtle - the alternative was to add a front arb to compensate (and hope it worked) or start from scratch (I was not convinced other coilover kits on the market did the job properly), I opted for the latter.

The proof is going to be in the pudding.

Got my bolts today. There are 3. Does it always come with one spare?

Suba, sorry for your knowledge and sorry to you julian but the idea of the roll centre being below ground is purely a static model for soft road cars. In cornering is not actually valid, and the biggest myth going when people talk about mcpherson struts. Never the less a roll centre does exist, but conidering force application points is the way to understand what will happen.

The loading or rather the rate of loading to the outside wheel will dictate greatly the handling ability of the car, and this ability is a function of roll resistance; With roll most notably being controlled by spring rate, and rate of loading by the compression damping. If your wish bones are running parallel to the ground then the cars c of g will be high, creating a greater roll moment - remember the idea of a intersecting wishbone axes is not valid i.e. dont imagine the distance of that pseudo point to the estimated C of G as truely representative of what the moment will be.

Incidentally out of all the tipo based alfas I know that race and 156's also none of them have a ride height where the wish bones would be parallel. But of course a race car is a lot stiffer then a road car and needs far less travel then a road car.

anyway carry on..

^^^^^ - I knew all that

I'm just resurrecting this thread since I finally got around to using Nigel's gaugeI finally fitted the FK's with Bravo top mounts and Jimbo's bravo "cups" to make it all fit, and adjusted the heights to raise the front since it was too low, now I have the top/front edge of the sills at around 28cm and the top/rear edge at around 29cm (but I don't know what standard height is?)

I've measured up today simply sticking the gauge to the upper part of the front brake disc (with wheels still on), poking out through the wheel, but it was not on a level surface, will try again tomorrow in a car park, but I got this:

nearside +1.15 camber, +6.0 caster
offside +1.2 camber, +6.2 caster

these seem a long away from workshop figures

camber -40' +/- 30' (or -10' to -1°10')
caster 3°30' +/- 30' (or 3° to 4°)

so it will be interesting to see if the "built-in" camber adjustemnt on the FK's (slotted top bolt hole) will adjust enough to get closer...currently the adjustment is approx half way (and suprisingly similar for each side despite being such a rough adjustment)

Dave, I'd aim for around -1.2' camber to give you a nice turn in and less understeer.
The extra caster is great, more caster on the front means more negative camber when you turn the wheels so even less understeer

Where's the "over my head" icon when I need it? Cheers Jimbo, will take some measurements later and I might even get time to adjust tonight. My steering wheel is so far away from centre when wheels are straight ahead it's clear I need to adjust that and check toe-in too (haven't had an alignment check for ages).

Just done some swotting up, I'll see how har I can push the axle in to the strut to get more negative camber.

I assume the extra caster comes from the fact it's lowered compared to standard?

Its probably due more to the different top mounts Dave.

Your camber is almost perfect as it is, maybe tweek the nearside in ever so slightly to match the offsides -1.2

The easiest way I found was to jack the car, remove the wheels and place some axle stands under the hub end of the wishbones.
Very carefully lower the car on to the axle stands so the weight of the car is sitting on them, the suspension should now be sat as it would be on its wheels and you can tweek up the camber more accurately.

Dave - if you set the camber with the wheels off, you'll be able to fit the camber gauge onto the centre of the hub (its magnetic and fits over the hub nut)

This is probably why you're getting an excessive castor measurement - its meant to work at the wheel centre

Be careful though, if you're fixing to the hub, it doesn't take much of a knock to make it fall off

I didn't think it would fit over the hub nut, I'll have to try again,

But I measured at the works car park today and got

nearside +1.2 camber, +3.0 caster
offside +1.05 camber, +3.0 caster

so tonight I removed the wheels, stuck the gauge on the brake discs, adjusted to level, then tried to reduce camber from what was indicated (about -0.7) to around -3 (I needed to reduce by 2.25 - 2.4 to get to -1.2) and I had to use up pretty much all the adjustment by pushing the hubs all the way in to the struts - now the camber looks hugely negative just looking at the car, but I'll try a run to work tomorrow and measure again.

Funny how the caster came out close to spec at 3 both sides?

Measured again today after adjusting last night

nearside -0.8 camber, +2.5 caster
offside -0.8 camber, +2.75 caster

Without camber bolts I'm not sure I could get any more negative, and perhaps the caster is not right because I'm not measuing it properly (on the centre of the hub) so will try again later.

Dave, your getting this all wrong

The FK are capable of running a huge amount of negative camber that will scrub the inside of your tyres off within a week so I'd be really careful.

You can't measure with the car jacked up or on an uneven surface or the measurements will be totally out.

I'd pay the £40 and get a proper wheel alignment done on it, it will save your tyres.