Good Afternoon AZ Vitara Crew.
Welcome to Camber Bolt Install 101
Here is how I went about installing a pair of camber bolts to my Vitara.
Tools & Parts Required:
1 Pair of Vitara Camber Bolts
Wheel Brace
Jack
Axle Stand
17mm Spanner X 2 or 17mm socket
15mm Spanner
13mm Spanner
1 Wheel Alignment booked prior.
Time taken with pics: 1/2hr
Vitara Camber Bolts
They work by having this offset "lobe" & locator tag. the actual "bolts" are thinner than the standard strut bolts but the "lobe" part is what locates the knuckle in the strut, by dialing it around you can add or remove camber.
Start by putting your Vitara in gear with the handbrake on.
Crack the wheel nuts using the Wheel Brace.
Cause my Vitara has sick gay IFS flex my Jack runs out of travel if i lift it off the chassis, so I go off the hole in the bottom of the Calmini wishbone. Only jack it high enough to get the wheel off the ground & a axle/chassis stand under the chassis rail at the rear of the wheel arch.
Remove the wheel nuts & remove the wheel, you are greeted with this mess...
really need to give it a good clean after the weekend.
WHILE THE WHEEL IS OFF HAVE A QUICK LOOK AT THE REST OF THE AREA.
I noticed I'm missing an E clip of my brake line/strut bracket.
Loosen off the top & bottom strut bolts that hold the strut to the knuckle with the 17mm spanners & remove the top strut bolt.
Now feed the camber bolt in from the front of the Vitara, paying close attention not to damage the threads
Now once you get it this far you will need to swing the locating tag & ring around to where the gap has been created from the camber bolt & the hole in the strut. Once you have found the gap & got the little tag in the strut hole it should look something like this, from here it just needs to be pushed in so it sits flat against the strut.
This sort of shows the original position of where the strut was sitting prior to the camber bolt being adjusted.
After a bit of a play around with the position of the tag & rotating the camber bolt you could watch the camber adjust, i found that they were at max adjustment when the tag was horizontal & point inwards, they ended up at the 9 o'clock position after this pic.
You can see the dirty marks from where the strut was sitting with the standard bolts.
Max Camber
Standard Camber
Once you're happy with the position of the camber bolt, hold the bolt end still with the 15mm & nip up the nut ensuring the camber bolt stays in the correct position, tighten the lower strut bolt back up with the 17mm spanners then tighten up the camber bolts to FT (Farken Tight)
It should sort of look like this...
Put the wheel back on & feed the acorn wheel nuts in evenly to ensure they centre the wheel on the taper, nip the wheel nuts up with the wheel brace.
Remove axle stand from chassis & lower off the jack carefully, once on the ground tighten up ALL wheel nuts.
Half the job is done, the other side is exactly the same, feed the camber bolt in from the front... (less likely it will rattle out if the nut does ever come off) set the tag & locator up at 3 o'clock this time (looking from the front)
Now off to the wheel aligners, now they can actually do something about the lack of camber, unlike previously it was only ever a "TOE & GO" wheel alignment where they only can adjust the toe in or toe out.
It will be interesting to see how many degrees of adjustment is given buy the bolts.
