More suspension advice

[Southern75]

seems as if I have another challenge on my hands here.

I feel I need more negative camber for a track car (or road car depending on my mood)

Presently i have about 1.5 degrees ... i would like about 3

One of the fastest sud's in NSW has about 3 ... just not sure i liked the way it was done.

Is there a nicely engineered way that you can get more neg camber in a sud ... e.g camber tops on the McPherson struts  what are the problems? ... which ones work if any?

What i don't want to do is to go away from the struts i have ... so no coil overs ... just yet anyway.

Also has anyone fiddled with castor ... i think what i have is about right ... but can it be changed ... what advantages would i gain?

Cheers

Matt

[colcol]

My 33 early on had a bent strut according a wheel aligner, so i slotted the struts where it bolts onto the wheel bearing assembly, to allow adjustment of camber, it allows the hub to swivel up and down to adjust the camber, you will have to use a round file and file the strut bolt holes into slots, and use cap screws instead of hexagon head screws as they are more compact and allow more adjustment, just keep filling and checking the direction of the swivel of the hub, HAPPY FILLING, Colin.

[Southern75]

That was the option i was reluctant to do

[colcol]

You could also put a camber adjustor on the both front and rear control arms, but not much adjustment is available, you could also slot the top struts, but that hardly moves anything, but you don't want too much negative camber as it will affect braking in a straight line, Colin.

[Andrew Bose]

Colcol has described the best way to alter camber as adjustable strut tops and filing the mounting holes give a lot more bump steer. Hope this helps.
Andrew

[Evan Bottcher]

I recall reading Adie Hawkins on alfaowner.com saying not to adjust the strut tops as it introduces bump steer.  I have no idea of suspension engineering so can't comment, except to say that Adie Hawkins knows what he's doing, if it sounds wrong it's probably me misinterpreting.  He said that adjusting at the hub end was the best way, slotting the bolt holes - which is also what I've seen on every other track Sud.

Almost 3 degrees camber on our Sud and it works great.  Bit hard to drive on the road

[Frank Musco]

Adjusting camber by slotting the holes where the strut bolts to the hub works fine. My track car has always had the slots, and it stays where I set it, although can be difficult to get what you want the first go, takes a few attempts to get spot on. I kept the lowest hole original and slotted the top three, so the bottom is the pivot point. I also found that because of the amount I lowered the track car, I had to remove negative camber instead of adding, so once lowered it had 4 degrees and then I changed it to around three.

To get more castor you can change the lower arms that connect the lower wishbone to the front crossmember. I have not tried this on the track car, but I am currently trying this on my road sprint. I recently parted out a series 3 alfa33 and I noticed that these arms were shorter than every other sud/sprint/33 that I have stripped. This change has stressed the lower wishbone bush and also changes the toe in/out. So I've gone backwards for the moment and waiting to see how the bush wears/moves in the wishbone, which will tell me whether to do the same to the track car. I have not worked out how to measure the change in degrees either, or how effective adding more castor in a Sprint will be?