how do you cure negative wheel camber

[crm318]

i just recently purchased a 78 chevy swb van, i noticed that the driverside wheel bows out slightly also known as negative camber. what parts need to be replaced to fix this? is it a ball joint, tie rod, etc..........?

[cdowns]

could be any number of things / bent frame ,or bent or wrong control arms both upper and lower , bent spindle ETC ETC alot of screwed up things can happen to a vehicle in 30-40years only way to tell is gettin at it and figureing out whats needed to return it to origanal specs

[xtreme80]

Bowing OUT would be positive camber. Assuming that you mean the top of the tire is what is bowing out.

[67Fleet]

^ correctomundo

[cajundragger]

check the bushing....prolly rotted out

[crm318]

the base of the wheel is out the furthest....negative camber. i will pop the wheel off this weekend and give it a look.

[Ivan D.]

Originally Posted by crm318

the base of the wheel is out the furthest....negative camber. i will pop the wheel off this weekend and give it a look.

So the wheels stay like this: "//-o-\\"? That's how my truck is too, really annoying cause it tries to eat up tires pretty fast. There are shims under shafts for the the upper control arms, generally speaking you should be able to add or remove several shims to correct camber, in both our cases we'll need to add shims to bring the op of the wheels out.

By the way, does anyone know how you do caster adjustment on these trucks? Are there horizontal slots in the shafts for the upper control arms, or is it done by sliding the lower control arms front and back? Reason for asking is when I'm about to add said shims to fix up my camber I'd like to not mess up my caster, which won't happen if it's adjusted through the LCAs, but if this the UCAs that determine caster things can get real interesting...

[LONGHAIR]

It should be shims on the upper control arm. The lower is fixed and the adjustment is in the upper. IIRC the upper shaft is behind the mounting point (as seen from the wheel well side) ....so you would need to remove shims to move the top of thetire outward......BUT

There must be something warn or bent for this to be noticable be eye. Wheel alignment is not an eyeball science. This needs to be done with proper equipment. Balljoints or control arm bushings would cause this as well as loose wheel bearings.

[Ivan D.]

Originally Posted by LONGHAIR

It should be shims on the upper control arm. The lower is fixed and the adjustment is in the upper. IIRC the upper shaft is behind the mounting point (as seen from the wheel well side) ....so you would need to remove shims to move the top of thetire outward......

Nope, actually the shafts are on the outside, so shims do indeed need added to correct the problem. However doing all the adjustments through the UCAs is a bad news for me, my truck tracks straight for now but if I start adding shims while I'm correcting the camber I'm sure to mess up the caster... might as well keep the geometry as is, at least it don't wander all over the road.

[whitelightenin69]

you are not going to change the caster if you add the same thickness of shims on both bolts, you get positive caster by adding shims to the front bolt or removing shims from rear bolt. just the opposite for negitive caster. you would be better off going to an alignment shop because if you change your caster or camber you will also change your toe, more than likely something is worn out or bent.

[Ivan D.]

Oh, nice thing about the shims, I thought it's slots in the shafts that allow them to be moved front and back to adjust caster - not too great design, but I've seen much worse engineering solutions. The truck will not see an alignment shop any time soon, I'd hate to have them tell me something needs replacement, then do a crappy alignment job anyways, and of course make me pay for it all. I will build my custom long-travel control arms first, install them, then hand the alignment shop a nice little surprise