The Dark Art of Camber Adjustment

[Banshee]

Long story short, my truck is off the road for the next few months at least as I've ran out of MOT (was grateful for the government COVID extension). It's in no fit state to go anywhere near an MOT station at the moment and I've got a huge extensive list of work that I'll be battling through as top priority.

Once all of the shock absorbers, ball joints, upper and lower arms etc are replaced, I'll be ready to throw my new tyres on But not before addressing the camber issues I have.

I put an order in over at Calmini a few months ago as some of you may recall from my project thread but it was cancelled and I had to re-raise the order due to needing to adjust the price for international postage from Bakersville, CA in the trumpland. After adding that and then working out import duties on top of that as well, I decided that at the time I couldn't justify spending almost £700 on a pair of upper control arms.

With this being the case, I hit the workshop manual in hope that I could learn a little more about how to adjust the amount of camber I am getting with the current setup. I understand the basic principles that adding shims between the upper control arm and chassis with have a positive effect on the camber and removing will have a negative effect but the workshop download just baffles my brain on this subject.

The new tyres were expensive and as such I'm going to do this correctly, I refuse to just throw a few washers at it and eyeball it and call it a good'un!!!
I want to understand the graph provided below and learn from others on here how you have done this job before if any?

I'm also on the hunt for a decent tyre alignment specialist that deals mainly with larger vehicles as the dumb monkeys that work at the likes of Kwik Fit & ATS etc would not be trusted with my wheelbarrow!!! Once I've found one I'll be going back as many times as I need to after making the adjustments needed to sort my alignment out and not wear out the outer edges of my tyres!!!

So get your eyes on this guys..........

I refuse to believe that there's not someone on here that can't break this down into a simple maths lesson for me for some beer tokens :nenau

Come on gang, help me out :bow :bow

 

[elty001]

The shims also adjust the castor angle so need to keep that in mind when doing anything with the upper control arms.
If you remove the upper arms keep the original shims labeled up so you know where they go on re assembly.
The principal of the chart is really simple but you need to be able to have the means to measure the camber for it to make any sense.
I made a crude gauge that fastened to the front wheel with a magnetic spirit level on it to do a rough d.i.y camber check after lifting the front on the torsion bars.
Bought a box of assorted shims from ebay to adjust if necessary.

 

[Flying Torquewrench]

I use Stanton Automotive in Redditch for everything I can’t do and they have always been good to deal with.

After rebuilding the Patrol the wear on the outer edges was unreal. After a year on brand new tyres the outer edge was completely worn away. I took it to the garage for a wheel alignment and now it is perfect. At the same time I replaced the front tyres with new ones and there is no excess outer edge wear at all.

 

[Banshee]

I use Stanton Automotive in Redditch for everything I can’t do and they have always been good to deal with.

After rebuilding the Patrol the wear on the outer edges was unreal. After a year on brand new tyres the outer edge was completely worn away. I took it to the garage for a wheel alignment and now it is perfect. At the same time I replaced the front tyres with new ones and there is no excess outer edge wear at all.

Now that's music to my ears!!! just had a look online and they are only 19 mins from my house :thumb2

 

[solarman216]

Thing to remember Zac is if you get it wrong and one edge of the tyre starts to wear then the damage has been done, that edge will always want to go faster than the rest of the tyre in order to keep up and will scrub, even when the adjustment has been corrected, unless you over inflate to keep that edge from road contact, that is why in all my years of vehicle work I have only ever relied on the guys that deal with that alignment area, an example is where on a twin wheel set up people think that a new tyre against an old one will work as the new will take more of the load, in fact the worn one will scrub very quickly and wear out in no time Rick

 

[Banshee]

This is what I'm dealing with

 

[Flying Torquewrench]

That wear on the tyre is exactly the same as I had. It was one of the worst they had seen and needed 1.5cm of correction.