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Negative camber help

pearljam724

pearljam724

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I have about 1.5 negative camber. Top of tire leaning in that much. My tires are starting to wear in the inside at a faster rate.
I have aftermarket QA1 upper control arms. I’m going to try to straighten out the camber myself. If I make it worst or can’t get it right. I ll take it to a shop.
I don’t know a lot about alignment adjustments. But, I believe the front bolt that attaches upper control arm adjusts camber ( toward bumper ) and the rear bolt adjusts caster. Am I correct about that ? If I want to correct that negative camber do I simply turn the bolt head or tighten that bolt head for camber ? I believe it shouldn’t take much more than a quarter to half turn to get that 1.5 degrees ? I realize the tires have to be off the ground.
 
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Both bolts have an effect on both caster and camber.
When I rebuild a front end or just reassemble one, I adjust the alignment cams so that the front bolt positions the control arm out toward the fender and the rear bolt positions it toward the engine. This is my baseline and all further adjustments go from there. MY Charger has .75 of negative camber and the tires do not wear the inside edges any faster than the rest of the tread. TOE will cause the tires to wear really fast. Ideally, you'd want zero toe but sometimes with wider tires, a slight amount of toe IN is desired because the rolling resistance of the tires pushes them slightly rearward, negating the slight toe IN.
My Charger has .75 NEG camber, 4.5 degrees of POS caster and 1/8" of toe IN. It tracks straight and the tires wear evenly.
10.JPG
18.JPG

From the rear, you can see a very slight camber angle.
 
Kern Dog said:
Both bolts have an effect on both caster and camber.
When I rebuild a front end or just reassemble one, I adjust the alignment cams so that the front bolt positions the control arm out toward the fender and the rear bolt positions it toward the engine. This is my baseline and all further adjustments go from there. MY Charger has .75 of negative camber and the tires do not wear the inside edges any faster than the rest of the tread. TOE will cause the tires to wear really fast. Ideally, you'd want zero toe but sometimes with wider tires, a slight amount of toe IN is desired because the rolling resistance of the tires pushes them slightly rearward, negating the slight toe IN.
My Charger has .75 NEG camber, 4.5 degrees of POS caster and 1/8" of toe IN. It tracks straight and the tires wear evenly.
View attachment 905436 View attachment 905437
From the rear, you can see a very slight camber angle.
Click to expand...
It's amazing how from the side that looks like too much camber (to me) but from the rear it looks spot on.
Modern radials can handle it. No pun intended.
 
Thank you. I understand one effects the other. My understanding, it usually take an equal amount of adjusting them both. My camber is actually closer to 1.9 degrees. I think that’s too much.
Maybe you’re right and it could be Toe.
The thing is though, it tracks straight as can be. On a 65 mph interstate, if I let go of the wheel. It doesn’t wonder the slightest and will track on its own for long distances.
When you adjust the camber and caster. Do you have to loosen the upper control arm nuts ? Or just turn the bolts without loosening any nuts ?
 
Maybe the shadow gives a false impression of excessive camber. Regardless, some negative camber is good.
 
Yeah...loosen the nuts. Both sides should be 3/4" hex. Crank on the head of the bolt and watch the control arms move.
My car has never been wrecked and somehow, was graciously gifted with a chassis that allowed me to get the 4.5 degrees of caster with stock parts....No offset bushings, no aftermarket control arms either.
 
Kern Dog said:
Yeah...loosen the nuts. Both sides should be 3/4" hex. Crank on the head of the bolt and watch the control arms move.
My car has never been wrecked and somehow, was graciously gifted with a chassis that allowed me to get the 4.5 degrees of caster with stock parts....No offset bushings, no aftermarket control arms either.
Click to expand...
Thank you, Kern Dog. Very nice car you have. Someone else installed my upper control arms. The previous set of tires wore perfect. So did this set, until I raised the front end a little. I knew I risked alignment when I raised the car. But, I’m thinking it should be very easy to straighten out the camber.
 
Kd thanks good info and I must say you have a very nice charger.
 
I've had cars that allowed great adjustments too and have always ran a lot of camber and caster. The closer to '0' caster you can get will allow easy steering at slow speeds but the car will usually wander a bit at higher speeds. More caster will get rid of the high speed wander but make slow speed steering a bit more strenuous like when parking. Lots of camber helps high speed handling on curvy roads. 1/8" toe or even a tad more can help in reducing tire wear when you have a lot of camber dialed in but I will try to go with less unless the car act 'darty'. With stock suspension but with radial tires, I NEVER run stock alignment specs on these 50+ year old cars and most of the time, they love it. My bone stock but a slightly lowered 66 /6 Belvedere did damn good using 7" wide cop car wheels and 235/75 tires all the way around using 'sightly noticeable' camber. My 95 V6 reg cab Dakota also did surprisingly well in handling with just 265/55's on stock 8" Durango wheels with stock settings however it did wear the outer tread more but it wasn't much but hear they get really pretty good after lowering. I learned front ends after getting screwed a couple of times by supposedly 'good' alignment shops.....
 
Kern Dog said:
Both bolts have an effect on both caster and camber.
When I rebuild a front end or just reassemble one, I adjust the alignment cams so that the front bolt positions the control arm out toward the fender and the rear bolt positions it toward the engine. This is my baseline and all further adjustments go from there. MY Charger has .75 of negative camber and the tires do not wear the inside edges any faster than the rest of the tread. TOE will cause the tires to wear really fast. Ideally, you'd want zero toe but sometimes with wider tires, a slight amount of toe IN is desired because the rolling resistance of the tires pushes them slightly rearward, negating the slight toe IN.
My Charger has .75 NEG camber, 4.5 degrees of POS caster and 1/8" of toe IN. It tracks straight and the tires wear evenly.
View attachment 905436 View attachment 905437
From the rear, you can see a very slight camber angle.
Click to expand...
If you take a pic in line with the rear tire but off a few inches, you will probably be able to see the camber better....or use a level on the front tire to show where the bubble is but you have to place it at a slight angle to avoid the tire bulge at the bottom.
 
Cranky said:
If you take a pic in line with the rear tire but off a few inches, you will probably be able to see the camber better....or use a level on the front tire to show where the bubble is but you have to place it at a slight angle to avoid the tire bulge at the bottom.
Click to expand...
As far as camber is concerned. Most of you may be familiar with the phone app TREMEC used for calculating driveline angles. It’s dead accurate using it for camber. Within 1/10 of a degree. No need to fabricate anything, rely on levels across side walls, etc. With Magnum 500 wheels, they have a large perfectly flat center cap. All you have to do is rest the side edge of your phone across the center cap. It gives you a dead accurate degree measurement. No guessing with bubbles from levels that are sometimes hard to see, etc. My camber reads 1.9 negative. I use that app for leveling anything. You can’t get more accurate using one. With common bubble levels. You can be close to 1 degree off, even when the bubble is between the lines.
 
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pearljam724 said:
As far as camber is concerned. Most of you may be familiar with the phone app TREMEC used for calculating driveline angles. It’s dead accurate using it for camber. Within 1/10 of a degree. No need to fabricate anything, rely on levels across side walls, etc. With Magnum 500 wheels, they have a large perfectly flat center cap. All you have to do is rest the side edge of your phone across the center cap. It gives you a dead accurate degree measurement. No guessing with bubbles from levels that are sometimes hard to see, etc. My camber reads 1.9 negative. I use that app for leveling anything. You can’t get more accurate using one. With common bubble levels. You can be close to 1 degree off, even when the bubble is between the lines.
Click to expand...
I'm a machinist.....
 
Midget ****?
Farm animal ****?
:bananadance:
 
Kern Dog said:
Both bolts have an effect on both caster and camber.
When I rebuild a front end or just reassemble one, I adjust the alignment cams so that the front bolt positions the control arm out toward the fender and the rear bolt positions it toward the engine. This is my baseline and all further adjustments go from there. MY Charger has .75 of negative camber and the tires do not wear the inside edges any faster than the rest of the tread. TOE will cause the tires to wear really fast. Ideally, you'd want zero toe but sometimes with wider tires, a slight amount of toe IN is desired because the rolling resistance of the tires pushes them slightly rearward, negating the slight toe IN.
My Charger has .75 NEG camber, 4.5 degrees of POS caster and 1/8" of toe IN. It tracks straight and the tires wear evenly.
View attachment 905436 View attachment 905437
From the rear, you can see a very slight camber angle.
Click to expand...
Post a few more pics of that bad boy Kern or point me to a link where you have more posted. The stance and look of that is exactly what I'm going for on my bird. I'll be picking your brain for details in the near future.
 
Hey Kern, I straightened out the camber. Piece of cake. Exactly, how do you measure the caster angle ? I found somewhere online that it suggests putting a level beneath the lower ball joint. But, it didn’t make a lot of sense. I understand both sides have to be identical. But, that’s all I understand. Have no clue how to measure the caster degree. Appreciate describing it to me.
 
From what I have learned, caster is not actually measured like you'd think. The wheels are turned from full left to full right and the alignment rack instruments measure the angles through the range of travel and report the average. My guess is that caster changes a bit through the full sweep.
Ever notice how some cars exhibit a tilting in or out of the wheels as they go full left or right? Cars with extreme caster angles can actually raise the front end in low speed turns as wheel/tire tilts out and rides on the outside edge. It is usually not a problem though since rarely are we going fast enough to scrub the tires at full left or right.
For me, when I am doing a "bonehead" alignment to get a car mobile, I set the alignment cams as I previously suggested, then set the toe. I'll drive the car and see if it shows a tendency to pull to one side or another. For example, if it pulls to the left, I'll take a little caster out of the left or add a little to the right.
As Crankee stated earlier, Caster aids in stability at the expense of steering effort. Our light A body Mopars with manual steering and a slant six had almost ZERO Caster as the default setting mainly to make the car easier to steer. Power steering cars can use all the caster you can scrape up since they are so overboosted anyway.
My Charger has a Firm Feel Stage 3 steering box with Fast Ratio Pitman and Idler arms. First, the F/F box is harder to turn than any original Mopar steering box. Then, The Fast ratio arms increase the leverage and reduce the turning revolutions of the steering wheel from approx 3 3/4 turns to 2 3/4. This adds up to steering effort on par with our 2015 Challenger. The steering feels heavy in a way that is quite good. This setup makes it so turning the wheel is a deliberate move, not likely that I'd steer anywhere that I wasn't planning on going. More caster adds to the effort needed to turn so factor that in as well.
 
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