4 Wheel Alignment + Camber

[mat_vw]

Hi

I seem to be struggling to find someone in the south who is able to do 4 wheel alignment and adjust the camber.

I have done some reasearch and i am aware that the lower subframe has to be moved to line up the front wheels again. The car has been lowered on coilovers, but not silly low.

One place i have emailed said i need to have installed front camber aftermarket adjuster arms, but i cant seem to find them anywere.

Any help or advice would be great.

Cheers Mat.

 

[Geeman]

I'm not sure you can adjust the camber on the front (and rear) at all. With it being a 4-arm setup... they're pretty much fixed. They're not like the old Mk2/3 Golfs where you can adjust the camber on the strut/hub bolts.

My front camber has an increased negative factor since I lowered it... and putting spacers on the front has exaggerated this too.

I don't think, unless you fork out hundreds of pounds for adjustable arms, that you're going to be able to dial out any negative camber...

 

[aragorn]

You cant adjust the camber on the front in the normal sense, all you can do is shimmy the subframe left or right a bit in order to equalise the camber between the two sides. Ie if one side is -0.5 and the other side is -1.5 then you can move the subframe over a bit and get them both at -1.0

Having said that, the multilink setup is pretty forgiving about lowering the car. Its designed specifically to ensure there arent huge geometry changes occurring as the suspension moves thru its range of motion, so it might not actually be all that bad unless your driving around on the bump stops.

Camber on the rear (Quattro models only) is adjustable via camber bolts in the bottom wishbones.

Personally i'd just take it somewhere that does computerised alignment and get them to do what they can. If the front turns out to be miles out, then you can faff around with the subframe. Otherwise just ignore it.

 

[Jonion]

Whereabouts in the south are you Mat?

 

[mat_vw]

Thanks for the comments.

Well that seems like that has cleared that up. I will see if my local can get a camber gauage on my car and see if he can loosen the subframe to make the camber equal on both sides like aragorn said, then take it to get 4 wheel alignment done. That seems thats the only way to sort of correct the alignment. It has been lowered about 60mm on the front and about 55mm on the back so not riding on the bump stops.

I have only noticed the ware on the tyres after 9K and they still have about 4mm left on the inside so getting around 12k out of some front is not too bad. Just buy cheap budgets.

Jonion i am based in the reading area. Why?

Cheers.

 

[Jonion]

Just that I know a lot of places but if you're not near any of them it's no help.
I'l see who's about Reading, have a few folk near there so they may know somewhere close to you.

 

[mat_vw]

Ok cool, any help is appreciated.

 

[aragorn]

The places i've been to that are equipped to do proper 4 wheel alignment will do the camber for you as part of the whole thing.

Heavy wear on the inside edge could be camber, but yours is on the outside, so its most likely incorrect toe settings, or worn out balljoints, or both.

 

[mat_vw]

No, my tyres are waring on the inside of the tyres and you can see the camber diffrence from the back wheels.