First of all thanks to everyone for responding to my camber question. I was
gone all last week and then didn’t want to respond before I looked into some
of the suggestions.
My shocks are standard shocks and Ken C. indicated that the shocks on his car
also measured about 9 inches in place. He also stated that if anything he has
negative camber. So I have abandoned that explanation.
First thing I did after reviewing the replies was to measure the distance
between the top shock mounts. I read this as dimension No. 54 (x 2) on page
5-102 of the workshop manual and it should equal 25.88 inches. I rigged up a
sheetrock square and framing square into a large caliper and all though it
wasn’t real precise I roughly measured that distance.
Looking around I then noticed that twelve years ago I had placed 3 shims
between the rubbered engine mounts and the block outriders on each side. I
removed these shims, put everything back together and jumped up and down on
each side ten times to settle everything in place. I then tried to find a
level spot in my garage to measure the camber and I came up with 0 degrees.
Now, I don’t claim to be an alignment expert, and this is the first time I’ve
tried to measure the camber myself but it seems quite straight forward and the
wheels did appear to be at 0 degrees. I even brought it by my local Triumph
Guru’s house (that’s you Greg) and he confirmed my conclusion that they
appeared at 0 degrees.
OK, problem fixed, thanks, bye. What?!!!!!
I’m skeptical of all this. How does taking some shims out of my engine mounts
affect my camber?
Let’s review: First the alignment shop tech. tells me he can’t correct the
positive camber because he ran out of bolt, he even says he has attempted to
align other LBC’s with similar results. I’m assuming his set up is much more
accurate than my framing square technique. Also I’ve experienced a lot of
under steer and people at the VTR convention in Hudson (Dave T.) and myself
though that visably there was to much positive front camber. I wasn’t
dreaming it.
So what caused my camber to go to zero? Possibly the addition of the shims in
the engine mounts threw off the geometry, pushing out on the upper part of the
suspension sub assembly. I would think this would have shown up in my
measuring of the distance between the top shock mounting bolts. But then
again my system for measuring was not perfect. Also I have a hard time
imagining how the presence of shims would effect the sub assembly. It seems
pretty stout and well connected to the frame (maybe twisting the frame?).
Maybe the process of loosening and tightening things and jumping up and down
put everything back into place.
As of right now my camber measurements read 0 degrees camber on the front
wheels, -2.7 degrees left rear, and 2.3 degrees right rear. I will reinstall
the spacer on top of the left spring.
Any more thoughts on this?
Scott Swanberg, St. Paul, MN
‘67 GT6
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