How does one set the front wheel camber at home in the garage. Can i do this or is it a wheel alignment place that needs to do it? It's for a ball joint front end. I realise the upper bal joint has the camber adjustment but can't find any tech article in books on it. Have just fitted CB performance drop spindles and need to re set everything.

M8
It all depends on how close you want it to be.

If you just want a rougn setting to get you to the whell aligners, dont worry about it. if it looks about right then leave it.
if you want to do it on a slightly longer term, you need to loosten the ball joint retaining nut and seperate the ball joint from the chicken leg. Do the nut up again so it JUST seats the ball joint.
The upper ball joint is made eccentric so if you grap a large spanner or multi-grips and turn the joint, youll see that the balljoint will move the wheel in or out at the top.
The car needs to be on level surface,,,very level. Just use a spirit level against the wheel and adjust it to upright (0Deg camber)
Tighten up the BJ nut and away you go. Dodgey but works well enough in the short term.
Remember that the eccentric BJ also has influence on the caster and so make sure that you have the eccentric facing the same way (front to rear) on both sides. There is a mark stamped onto the "nut" part of the BJ and ensure that these marks are both forward or backward. I would set them so you have more caster rather than less and the wheel alignment joint can fix it up later on. Otherwise you will end up with the steering pulling all over the place.
its a bit difficult to put into writing but you will see what I mean.
L8tr
Enn[ Edited on 27/7/05 by tassupervee ]

Tassuper, is this the same for T3 ball joint front ends??

Ummm sorry M8 I cant say for certain as I have not had a close enough look at a T3 beam.
I do have an old one laying about somewhere Ill have to have a look at it tomorrow.

If it has eccentric balljoints then yer, you can sure do the same thing.
L8tr M8
E

Hi

The Bently manual say that the notch on the eccentric must always be set forward. If your doing a rough camber setup so you can get it to the alignment place, do it with car in the air, a lot easier and you dont get much variation when the cars on the ground.

Steve

Yer thats correct M8.
I tend to forget that the F-V only has about 100 kilos over the front wheels..............
Either way tho. after a camnber adjustment is made, the toe setting will need to altered as well to bring things back to straight ahead.
Its a wise move to put the car back on its wheels and roll it forward and back a couple of meters or so to "settle" everything and do another quick reading with the spirit level.
L8tr
E