[T3] Camber Problems

Brent Bottolfson brent at bottolfson.net
Tue Sep 13 12:48:10 PDT 2011


> Brent,
>
> I probably missed this: Exactly what bearing was "broken" on your
> original beam, and on which side?
The upper roller bearing on the left side, these are the NLA ones.  The 
cage/holder was damaged and the rollers just fell out.
> On 12 Sep 2011 at 23:25, Brent Bottolfson wrote:
>
>> I've looked through the Bentley and seen the pictures you're referring
>> to.  I'm really starting to think something is bent, either one or more
>> of the control arms or a spindle.  With the way I have the pan set up,
>> there's no reason the angles of the steering knuckles/rotors shouldn't
>> be very close to equal assuming it's all straight and level.
> I hadn't thought of a bent spindle, but you're right, that would do
> it too.
>
>> I replaced the bare beam due to the broken bearing on the left side.
>> But I'm also doing a pan swap as well.  The pan swap is due mostly to
>> rust under the battery and many, many rivets holding in replacement pan
>> sections.  On that (original) pan the left front of the 'head' of the
>> pan where the beam mounts up doesn't look right to me.  It just looks
>> like the left side is bent in a little.
> If it was a wheel bearing that was actually broken, not just worn
> out, that might have been accident damage. If that was severe enough
> to bend the left frame horn, it might also have bent the beam itself,
> as well as one of the torsion arms. You've replaced the beam and the
> pan, but you're still using the same arms, so I'm trying to think of
> some way to check the arms you have.
The wheel bearings were ok when I took them out.  They were probably 
replaced though, as it had like new rotors when I bought it.  The races 
looked new to me too.
>
> If you were here, we could probably fixture up things in a large
> lathe. Even if the lathe was not large enough to spin the arm, we
> could use it to hold the arm and locate a point as shown in the
> Bentley manual, then compare it with the other arm to verify whether
> they were mirror images or not.
>
> The spindles could also be checked in a lathe.
>
>> There's a somewhat local guy that has the parts I need, just a bit of a
>> drive.  There's also a Square at Pick-n-Pull that had most of the front
>> end still there.  I think I'm going to replace the control arms and
>> spindles.  At least I'm getting this sorted now while I have it apart.
> It would be good to find a way to check things, because otherwise
> there's no way to be sure that your "new" used parts are not also
> bent.
I agree with that.  I'm kind of taking a chance with the only parts 
available.  There's one machine shop here that I like, but at $60 an 
hour I'd be in the same price range to check them as to just replace them.
>> My question now is about the torsion bars.  They are out of the
>> original, broken bearing, beam.  They seemed fairly straight when I
>> swapped them over to the new beam.  Would they affect camber at all?  I
>> don't think it could be much, if any, as the control arms are basically
>> constrained to radial movement once they're seated in the
>> bearings/bushings and locked in place with the splines and grub screw.
> I agree that the torsion bars should not have any effect on this.
> Your main concern on them should be that they are not rusty in a way
> that might lead to early breaking. That happens here, but is probably
> not nearly as common where you are.
>
> I also have arms here that I'm pretty sure of, but local is better
> because these are pretty heavy.
The torsion bars were really nice.  They was no rust and they still had 
drips of cosmoline (or something waxy like) on them.

I wonder if maybe my problem is on the left side.  Maybe with no load on 
the suspension the right wheel is correct and a left control arm is 
bent.  Who knows, I guess there's no way to really tell as I'm only 
trying to get them equal.  Before I started the whole restoration 
project, I remember telling the local mechanic who checked it over for 
me that one of the wheels looked wrong.  I never bothered to get it 
fixed then.  I think its coming back to haunt me now.  I'll post again 
with what happens.

Brent



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