Adjustable wishbones (camber)
 

Hi,

Is there a way to transform the front and rear top wishbone to make them easy to adjust camber (I have book specs wishbones).

Like drilling the treads inside the top tube to a wider diameter, and inserting another threaded tube inside, to allow the drag links to move by turning this insert instead of having to detach the drag links from the upright for adjusting camber? I think I saw that somewhere on other seven-like cars.

If it is possible, do you know who can do this modification? Phil perhaps?

Thank you.

Drilling out the 30mm material on your top front wishbones is not really an option as I have no safe and secure way of clamping them in place, a complete wishbone is just the wrong size for the vice. If you want the sleeved adjusters you can find the parts on ebay, be warned though the outer tube where you weld the arms too some times distorts it making the inner section a bugger to get back in. Doing the job correctly would involve machining the outer ring under size,welding the arms to it,leave it to go cold then ream it to size. Unless you are planning on adjusting the ride height between track and road use 8-12 times a year how often will you have to move them?

Have you ever thought of coming up with a design of top wishbone that would allow for castor adjustment ? That would be worthwhile.

The problem with making wishbones that are adjustable for castor is that some people don't know that lower ball joints have a limit to their movement, worse case would be that the joint is at it's limit when the suspension moves and breaks some thing. The only people that tend to need to adjust things every 10 mins are racers and they use rose joints and spacers as it means you can move the caster/camber to suit ride heights.

Thank you for the reply Phil. I see your point. I thought it would be easier than this to modify the wishbones. You are right, I will not adjust camber many times, once it is done... but is looks to be such a hassle to adjust it the first time even if it is the only time (removing the shock lower point (for the rear wishbones), the drag link bolt, adjust the drag link, put everything back together, check the camber angle, and then doing the same thing again and again, as many times as necessary, until you find the right setting, it is not very convenient), it would have been much easier to turn only the insert to adjust it, and even for this one time, it would have been worthwhile.
But I guess I will have to go through this :(
But thanks you very much for the help and the explanations.

I had a quick thought while in the shower about adjustable caster top front wishbones and it's simple to do as well. If you reduce the length of the bush tubes down from 35 to 25mm still use the 44mm crush tubes and put nylon/delrin/ali spacers between the suspension brackets and the polybushes.

or make wider suspension brackets with shimms to allow the top wishbone to be moved forward or backwards

I see what your saying Baz but making the suspension brackets wider causes a few problems in that you then need custom top brackets which become more flimsy as they are unsupported over a greater length, custom crush tubes and if you all ready have your brackets welded to the chassis you risk damaging the front frame. It would work out cheaper just to cut the bush tubes off the wishbones and weld narrower ones on and make up the difference with the drag link, you would then have adjustable caster wishbones using shims/spacers.

I have made my brackets wider and boxed them to make them stronger it works perfect. Look at side 9 in my buildthread for a picture.

I was just thinking about replacing the bush tubes with rod ends, I've seen it done on an mk Indy somewhere. Obviously your going to sacrifice comfort but it would be nice to have genuine self centering.