[T3] Alignment (Daniel Nohejl)

[Daniel Nohejl]

The car is a ’69, so it’s IRS. The measurement is just fender clearance and the idea was to see if it was even side-to-side, not to go deeper than that yet. I’m still looking for a competent alignment shop that’s not an hour drive from where we live. I know that’ll give a more accurate reading, but I thought the measurement at the wheel wells would give a basic determination of evenness. After our last alignment in July and before our 7k mile road trip with a heavy load in back, the camber on the left rear was .5* and on the right where the tire wore it was -1.7*. 

The before/after sheet from that alignment shows that the tech was somehow able to change the rear camber. I read that there’s some degree of up/down adjustment in the spring plate holes, not just fore/aft for toe adjustment, but I don’t know. I thought that spring plate angle was the only way to change camber but what do I know…..

http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1526139.jpg



Daniel



> On Dec 11, 2016, at 5:29 PM, Phil Hof <phil.hof at ostronic.org> wrote:
> 
> If they measured when he car is empty, and you usually drive alone, having the driver’s side 0.5” higher will probably settle to balanced with you in it.  Half an inch of height will not affect camber appreciably, so that’s not the issue.
> Did they measure camber, caster, toe?  Or just the fender clearance?  There were no specs for the latter.
> What year is your car; IRS or swing?
> -Phil
> 
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 15:40:07 -0500
>> From: Daniel Nohejl <d.nohejl at gmail.com>
>> To: "type3 at vwtype3.org" <type3 at vwtype3.org>
>> Subject: Re: [T3] Alignment
>> Message-ID: <04AC62DC-4BFE-438B-9D9B-75380F77A730 at gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> 
>> Ok, so I finally got around to getting the front and rear ends of the car measured. I brought it by a shop we?ve used in the past and they kindly did the measurements for free. Of course I don?t have any factory numbers to compare them to (if anyone finds them, I?m still interested!!) but at least we have a general sense of things. The front is even: from the ground to the top of the wheel well is 26? on both sides. The rear is a different story: from the ground to the top of the wheel well is 24.25? on the left and 23.75? on the right. Again, I don?t know what they?re supposed to be, but the right is clearly .5? lower than the left. If anyone recalls, the right rear tire looked like this:
>> 
>> http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1572782.jpg
>> 
>> Perhaps being .5? lower on the right has thrown off the camber just enough that the tire wore that much worse and more quickly than all the others?
>> 
>> Daniel
>> 
> 
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