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regularman

regularman

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Its time to do something. I have checked the toe in a dozen times and its ok, but the tires are wearing on the inside and the passenger side one is not even legal any more. How do I adjust the bushings for camber? This ticks me off now that I find out that the 13 inch firehawks are not available any more :frown:
 
Those off-center things are a real source of frustration... If the kingpin bushes and upper and lower bushes are renewed it shouldn't be a problem. If those are new then something else (think chassis) is bent or askew.
 
Hey Kim Webb,
I went through this a month ago. I had to change out the front shocks due to wear and while I was at it I replaced the bushings as noted in one of the comments above. From there everything was tightened up with no play in the front end. I noticed then the premature wear pattern starting on the tires as in your case. The fix for this is shimming. Outer wear on the tires is "positive" camber. If the wear is on the inside your toe-in adjustment can correct that once set correctly. To adjust the positive camber you need to shim under the shocks. The shims should be the exact base configuration so you may need to ask a local machine shop to make these and put the holes in and so forth. I started with an 1/8" steel shim stock on each side which was enough to address the issue. You will need to revisit the toe-in adjustment after doing this as it may change things a bit.
Good luck. This isnt that hard to do but its not to fun either.
 
Hi Kim,
I went through this a couple of years ago myself. My car had been damaged at some point in a collision and had a real steering problem coupled with premature tire wear in one side. Anyway I was able to fix it with offet upper trunion bushings from Speedwell. Here's a link to the discussion I had over at Spritespot on the subject. One of the members gave me a neat little trick to measure camber at home. Hope this helps
Mark
https://www.spritespot.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1945
 
DrEntropy said:
Those off-center things are a real source of frustration... If the kingpin bushes and upper and lower bushes are renewed it shouldn't be a problem. If those are new then something else (think chassis) is bent or askew.
Click to expand...
I went through both swivels a few years ago during the resto and found almost no paly in the king pins so I didn't have them rebushed, just put them back with new seals and grease. New threads and fulcrum pins in the lower a-arms and all new poly bushings everywhere else. Thing is that it has not been wrecked since before I went through it and it didn't eat tires back then, so it has to be somthing I did. I need it on some perfectly level ground it see what is going on. My basement and drive are sloped. Might put it on the trailer and put boards under the trailer unitl it is level side to side and use the tongue jack for front and rear level and then see where the front wheels are at. I wonder if my tube shock conversion had any effect on this? The lever shocks are still in there and in the correct place. Hmmn. I need to get better than 3K miles on a set of front tires. The rear ones have almost no wear at all. At least I did the modification of the weber carb yesterday and that seems to have helped with my dead spot that I had when easing into the throttle in overdrive.
 
Kim, you need to find a way to accurately measure the camber on your car. In all my years of experience around cars I've never heard of just camber causing such rapid tire wear. I really suspect something else is wrong, that's not to say that the camber isn't out, just that there is also another problem lurking.
The front camber on my car is visibly negative, but I'm not experiencing the same type of rapid tire wear. I just got back from a 2500 mile trip and can't see any noticable change in the front tires even on rather soft Yokahama AO48s.
Incorrect toe setting or ackerman due to a bent steering arm will scrub the tires very quickly. You'll need good level ground to check that as well so check around the neighborhood you should be able to find a parking lot or such that is level enough for some measurements.
 
Ackerman... referring to the varied angles of the inner and outer tire along a curve. I'd think it'd need to be bent REAL bad to cause that type of wear.
 
The front tires. Every time I checked the toe, I was not on the level. Perhaps something has worked loose and changed the toe?
heat013.jpg

heat014.jpg
 
This is me "stringing" my frogeye. With bonnet (hood) removed, I strapped a bar to the front chassis rails, tied a string to each end & tied the other ends to large bricks, so that the string runs level with the center of the wheels. Got the steering wheel straight, & the center of the hubs 1/2" from the string at the front & 1" at the rear. Then adjust the tie rods until the front edge of the rim is 1/32" further away from the string than the rear edge of the rim.
Check & double check all is straight, & steering wheel is still straight.
It tracks lovely. We also do our race car "Formula Jedi" exactly the same way.

dsc01589.jpg

:driving:
 
Trevor Jessie, I agree, you have to be pretty far off with the akerman to cause that much tire wear. I once had such a situation with a shortened Corvair dune buggy. The akerman alignment was still set for the longer wheelbase and it would scrub the front tires quite fast. I rebent the steering arms to correct for the shorter wheelbase and cured that problem. Incorrect toe settings will also cause the akerman angles to be off so adding to the tire wear problems when cornering while the toe problems wear the tires more when traveling straight.
From the photos the tires don't appear to have too much camber at all. Usually to wear the tires to that angle the tire would visually appear to be leaning as it contacted the ground. I really suspect something amiss with the steering alignment, either toe incorrectly set or worn rod ends allowing the car to toe out under load. If camber is close to normal specs for most cars then that type of tire wear would usually be caused by a toe out condition with a toe in condition causing wear on the outside edges. Higher than usual caster angles will move the toe in wear to the inside, but you have to have a lot more caster than the Spridget suspension is designed for.
 
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