Tracking and camber
 

I've started fitting my side panels and when they're finished, i'll be tightening up all the locknuts on the suspension.

Can anyone tell me the easiest way to set the initial tracking and camber angle with no specialist tools?

Cheers

Dave

first tip your steering track rod ends are in the top they should come from the bottom up with the nut on top.

once that is sorted get your wheels on and sit the car on the ground. if your floor isnt level use bits of wood or what ever you have under the wheels so the car is on a level surface.

To set the camber front and back use a normal level place it from the vertically from the top of the rim to the bottom not on the tyre and get the bubble in the middle. with that done you know the camber is at 0deg on all 4 wheels. the rear caber should be set at 0 so thats already donein the last step.

on the front wind the top ball joints in by about 2mm from what they were at 0 deg that should give you about 1-1.5 deg negative camber. (it did on mine)

for the front toe set the wheels straight then turn each trackrod in by 1 turn which should give about 0.5deg toe in. any more and it wont self centre. if it doesn't self centre toe it out more.

it wont be perfect but to should be something near

Make sure the discs are held tight with the wheel nuts and measure the gap at the front of the disc from one side to the other,then measure the same from the rear face of the disc.

When both distances are the same it should give parallel tracking.

As for the camber place something under the lower arms to load the suspension and use a level on the round part of the hub with the hex in the middle to see if it is going in or out in the vertical plane.

Negative/the top in is what you need,the width of the bubble is probably a good start.

Hope it makes some sense ;) .

Cheers for the tips guys.

That trackrod isn't in, it's just balanced there at the moment. I took it out to help get the side panel on. (it was in the right way up :P)

Dave,
your car is looking great :cool:
It won,t be long before its rolled out of the lockup & given its first time in daylight:)

I like the way its sort of "winking" at the camera in that first photo :D

cheers
andy

Cheers Andy.

Yea, shouldnt be too long now. I got the 2 front tyres fitted this evening, so once i've finished painting the wheels it should be ready for its first day outside. If we finally get rid of this annoying weather! :D

david, what nose cone are you using, looks really nice, cheers

Saturn by the looks of it,the tikety boo place for all your fibreglass needs ;)

Yup its from Saturn. Highly recommended.

A slightly more elaborate method for toe is to use string lines -

Get two pieces of wood of angle iron that are wider than the car and clamp across the front and back. Find the centre of the car then mark two equal spacings wider than the car on the 'jig' then put a notch into your jig - repeat at the other end of the car. Now tie a piece of string around the jig at one end making sure it sits in your notch. pull the string to the front of the car, rest it over the 'jig' sitting in the notch and tie a big weight on the end. Repeat on both sides of the car. You can now measure the distance from the string line to the wheel rims, set the steering straight then by measuring offsets from the string line and a bit of trig you can determine your toe settings. Advantage of this method is that you can do all the wheels with the same setup and also if you clamp the 'jigs' to the car you can do any remedial work with everything setup and just remove the string for access.

We used to use this method on one of our race cars and actually put dowels in the chassis so the bars could just be dropped on and held with a quick clamp.