[flymaster]

Just had a wheel alignment on my 97 Maruti trayback. Toe in was correct at 2mm. Camber was 0 degrees on the drivers side, but the passenger side has 1/2 degree positive camber. This explains why it has a tendency to pull left on our dodgy, over cambered bush roads. It has had a king pins/bearings overhauled, but I'll do a check on the bearing pre-load on the weekend. Researched the Internet and found Ingalls Camber Shims or SPC offset bearing kits to correct dodgy camber, anybody tried these options?
Would it be better to get the diff professionally aligned, then braced? Anbody around Toowoomba able to straighten/brace diffs?
Regards Nick

[want33s]

flymaster wrote:

Researched the Internet and found Ingalls Camber Shims or SPC offset bearing kits to correct dodgy camber, anybody tried these options?

You can buy shims to put between diff housing and leaf springs to adjust castor.
You can fit offset radius arm bushes to adjust castor.

There is no adjustment for camber in a solid axle car unless you want to press bend your housing.

[joel]

1/2 a degree? i doubt you could tell. i really wouldnt worry about it.
i doubt an f1 car would notice half of a degree, let alone all the other faults and inconsistencies with an indian made suzuki.
worry about it when you banana your axle housing, than just get another one mate.

[Red89]

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=23660&hilit=+camber+Sierra+vitara

[Gwagensteve]

Factory spec (Japan) is 1 degree of negative camber IIRC.

[atari4x4]

do a few small controlled jumps trying to get it to land on the front left.

[sideways]

In the 80s you could get shim kits that went between the spindle and knuckle to adjust camber.

Was called "Shim-o-line" or something like that. There's an article on them in one of my old 4wding mags.

[JrZook]

want33s wrote:

There is no adjustment for camber in a solid axle car unless you want to press bend your housing.

Not Suzuki specific but I believe you can get offset kingpins to alter camber on solid axle vehicles.

Either which way 1/2 a degree is nothing to be worried about. Most cars have a tendency of veering left on cambered roads anyway

[SuziBlu]

Designed to veer left even on a non cambered road, idea, fall asleep and the car will veer left, not into oncoming traffic.

Add a bit of road camber, and if you go out to it, you go left, kill no-one oncoming.

[Gwagensteve]

I used to think that, but there's nothing in the FSM as far as I know that specifies any alignment information for left or right had drive - all parameters are the same IIRC.

In any case, there isn't any adjustment that could be carried out on a Sierra, for instance, to change the tracking of the vehicle - camber won't make it track right or left, and is specified at 1˚ regardless. toe in/out won't either.

I suppose there could be a very small effect if caster is different left to right, but caster is fixed on a Sierra.

Any ideas how it might be achieved?

Steve.

[SuziBlu]

Mate has a Bridgestone franchise, in Lincoln, we were talking an I asked why dont you get the "pull" out of the steering, thats what he told me.

May be true, may be bullshit, seems pretty logical to me but.

Steve, you sure toe in will not make it track straight, or pull ?

[Gwagensteve]

If you change toe, it applies equally to both tyres, so if the car pulls more to the left on a cambered road, at will pull more to the right if the camber is to the right (like on the outside lane of a multi-lane road.)

Single carriageway way roads are cambered to the left, and that's the way the car pulls because of gravity. Get the car on a road that's cambered to the right, and that's the way it will drift.

I'm not saying there aren't more discrete adjustments for IFS cars that have separately adjustable caster and camber (and rear wheel alignment adjustments, where toe could be set differently left to right) , but that's not the case with our cars.

In our instance, you can't get the "pull" out of the steering, because the "pull" is coming from the road.

Steve.

[SuziBlu]

From my experience, a car will "pull" to the left when driving on the left of the road, but when passing and on the right, it will drive straight.

I do a lot of dirt road driving, lots my way, and they have a pretty heavy camber to protect the road from water, and you will go left when on the left side, and straight on the right side. Long lonely dirt roads, you tend to drive on the right because its a lot more comfy.

This was why the topic came up with me mate, why ?

[Gwagensteve]

I don't really care about the why, only the how. I don't know how it is possible to correct a Sierra for camber.

I can comment that I wear LHF tyres about 15% quicker than any other tyre on the car - that's been the case with my last 4 road cars - that's the effect of steering up the camber of the road all the time.

None of my current road cars noticeably pull to the left unless they are on very cambered roads.

[Scrawny]

Is this car specific SuziBlu? Up here in Qld the stretch of Bruce highway from Brisbane to the Sunny Coast is dual carriage way separated by grass etc for opposing traffic. For most of it the left lane is quite flat while the right lane is heavily cambered to the right. I've driven a range of vehicles up and down (small and medium cars, 4wds and big and small trucks) and they've all pulled to the right in the right lane and had minimal to no pulling either way in the left

[SuziBlu]

Naa not specific, I have 5 cars at the moment, all do this, maybe its a country/rural thing.

Interesting that the camber is inwards towards the Island, so that in tropical downpours, wouldn't it tend to flood out the two opposing close lanes ?

[Scrawny]

There's quite a gap between opposing traffic with varying depths of drain/deep 'V' cut.

[JrZook]

Gwagensteve wrote:

I can comment that I wear LHF tyres about 15% quicker than any other tyre on the car - that's been the case with my last 4 road cars - that's the effect of steering up the camber of the road all the time.

Roundabouts being one direction can also attribute to this.

[Daz7]

There are few bolt on camber kits for rear live axles.

http://www.raceproducts.net/sprinter-bo ... amber-kit/

Its also quite common for in categories like nascar to heat and bend housings ever so slightly.

[rick1970]

SuziBlu wrote:

Mate has a Bridgestone franchise, in Lincoln, we were talking an I asked why dont you get the "pull" out of the steering, thats what he told me.

May be true, may be bullshit, seems pretty logical to me but.

Steve, you sure toe in will not make it track straight, or pull ?

Tracking straight and pulling are two very different issues......

Altering the toe (within reason) usually has very little effect on pulling to the left/right. It can however have a noticeable effect on straight line stability and the way the car turns into corners. Normal for a non front drive is a bit of toe in, change this to a bit of toe out and you usually get an improvement in initial turn in on corners, but sacrifice some straight line stability. A lot of RWD race cars are set up with toe out. Speedway cars usually have a shitload of toe out to help them turn in to the corners.

A constant driven front axle 4x4, like my Rangie, is usually set up toe out. In the Rangie's case, factory setting is 1.2-2.4mm toe out. I believe the constant 4x4 cruisers are about the same. I'm going to play with the toe settings on my Sierra to try and get it to turn in better on the road, because compared to the Rangie, its like your trying to steer it with a bit of rope through the side windows....

Any decent truck alignment place should be able to correct camber issues.....be it by brute force (chains and port-a-powers) if nothing else.

[fordem]

Gwagensteve wrote:

camber won't make it track right or left, and is specified at 1˚ regardless. toe in/out won't either.

It will - if the camber is uneven L~R and it's a large enough variance it certainly will.

A number of years back my wife had a used AT170 Toyota Corona and was having no ends of issues with the car pulling to one side or the other - now as a rule, I won't touch her cars, it creates to much friction between us, but she was at her wit's end with this one - so I took a look at it - the camber was that far out on the left front that I could see it standing alongside the vehicle (by the front passenger door) - turns out a previous owner had ovalled the holes in the struts - I spent several hours that Sunday, slackening the bolts and tapping the struts in/out tightening & test driving until I got it to run straight - camber bolts would have made life so much easier.

That was the last used car she ever bought.

[droverdave]

Last time i had a wheel alignment (not on the suzuki), they set the camber the same on both sides (yes it was adjustable), but they set the castor slightly different on one side, at least 1 degree more. (i cant remember what side it was)

When questioned why this was the cast (i gave specific wheel alignment settings), they said it was to correct for the camber in the road.

As for camber on a live axle. hows the wheel bearing on that side? any clearance in the wheel bearing can show up as camber.

Or is the wheel buckled/bent? you'd sure hope not, but it could show up as camber on the wheel alignment machine...

[flymaster]

Thanks for the replies fellas.
droverdave... Wheelbearing was loose just before Rego (4months ago) so I tightened the play out. Original sticker on the windscreen from previous wheel alignment states "fair drift left", so obviously a long term problem. Will check for any L/H brake issues on the weekend. Wheel alignment guy said it seemed to have play in the king pins (even though they where replaced) so I'll check for pre load.
Just changed to wider rims and it still has a tendency to pull left, so can't be bent rims.
Head mechanic at work, says decreasing toe in would reduce the tendency to pull left. I have 2' degree caster wedges to go in as well, which may reduce vagueness.
foredem... Back in the old days a rat tail file was a poor mans adjustable strut top. Loved the group G rally days!
Regards Nick