JMortensen Posted April 11, 2007 Share Posted April 11, 2007 GrommitZ, I'm actually beginning to rethink my original decision not to change camber. I'm thinking that maybe this kit from MSA would make sense. http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/CTGY/PSDC08 Does anyone know how easy it is to change camber on this? Do you have to pull the strut assembly out to adjust, or can it be done on the car? The MSA site is silent about this. You don't want that part. That thing replaces the flexible rubber tophat with polyurethane which is anything but flexible. Puts a lot of load on the strut, causing premature strut failure. I'd look at some longer control arms or redrilling the hole in the crossmember further out. You can also slot the strut top mounting holes a little bit for a camber plate type effect. I'm not a big fan of the camber bushings in the front, but that would also work and wouldn't require a lot of work to install. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zmanco Posted April 19, 2007 Author Share Posted April 19, 2007 A few more questions: 1. I've been thinking about this some more, and have decided I am "ok" with slotting the strut top mounting holes. But from what I can see, it looks like there isn't much room to move the strut before it will hit the inside. For those of you who have done this, how much negative camber were you able to gain from this? 2. Jon, I follow your concern with the MSA Street Camber Kit and causing premature failure of the strut. You mentioned the camber bushings instead: http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/CTGY/PSDC07A I had dismissed them because it looked like there wasn't going to be much additional camber gained, but perhaps I was mistaken. Again, have any of you done this mod, and how much camber did you gain? 3. Lastly, how does the extra camber affect driving on the street? I had a 325 a few years ago to which I added Dinan's stage III package (springs, struts, bars, front and rear camber plates). IIRC I had about 1.5 degrees negative camber up front with 245 tires. When driving on ANY road with ANY amount of ruts, the car would hunt all over the place. It was not uncommon for it to jump 1 foot to either side without even moving the steering wheel. Needless to say, not fun! But I know that the BMW and Z geometries are not the same, so wonder if I need to be concerned about this with about 1 degree camber and "only" 225 rubber? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zmanco Posted April 21, 2007 Author Share Posted April 21, 2007 bump Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted April 22, 2007 Share Posted April 22, 2007 Neg camber will make the car follow ruts. No getting around that, although a little toe in on the street will help. If I recall correctly, camber bushings give about a degree of adjustment. You might get 1/2 degree by slotting the strut towers. I ran -1.5 degrees camber in the front with 1/8" toe for years, never had a problem with it. When I got over 2 degrees it started getting really squirrely, especially up here in Seattle where all the freeways have deep ruts from studded snow tires. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgkurz Posted October 7, 2007 Share Posted October 7, 2007 Neg camber will make the car follow ruts. No getting around that, although a little toe in on the street will help. If I recall correctly, camber bushings give about a degree of adjustment. You might get 1/2 degree by slotting the strut towers. I ran -1.5 degrees camber in the front with 1/8" toe for years, never had a problem with it. When I got over 2 degrees it started getting really squirrely, especially up here in Seattle where all the freeways have deep ruts from studded snow tires. Jon, I recently went to have my 77 280z aligned and the factory specs for front camber are .3deg to 1.8deg. My car has camber adjusters but the technician was adamant that even a small amount of negative camber would wear my tires significantly sooner. I was thinking 1deg of negative camber should be fine since the car gets maybe 5K a year on the odometer. I have to take the car back to the alignment shop since the steering wheel is off-center so I might have them adjust camber again. Do you think 1deg negative is a problem with groove tracking or premature wear? I see you run negative 1.5deg. How are your tires looking? BTW, I'm running .09deg of Toe-in on the front. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cygnusx1 Posted October 7, 2007 Share Posted October 7, 2007 If you drive straight 100% of the time on flat roads, zero camber is perfect. The more you turn, the harder you turn, or the more lean the car has, the more negative camber you want in a Z. I am running -1.3 up front. I get it by lowering the car 1" from stock with tokico springs, illuminas, bump-steer spacers, and by using the eccentric bushings from MSA fully extended. After a moderatley fast drive on twisty country roads, the tires are eveny heated across the thread. That means they are probably wearing evenly. Before I added the front negative camber, with stock alignment, I used to wear out the outside front edges all the time. In the rear I now run stock alignment resulting from a 1" drop, but plan to add -0.5 to -1 degree and maybe some very minor toe in if possible, for braking stability. I run relatively massive sway bars... 1-1/8" and 7/8". I had to loosen the front endlinks to get the front to bite better on corner entry and mid corner. Also, use rubber T/C rod bushings on the backside of the T/C bracket and Poly on the front side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted October 7, 2007 Share Posted October 7, 2007 Jon, I recently went to have my 77 280z aligned and the factory specs for front camber are .3deg to 1.8deg. My car has camber adjusters but the technician was adamant that even a small amount of negative camber would wear my tires significantly sooner. I was thinking 1deg of negative camber should be fine since the car gets maybe 5K a year on the odometer. I have to take the car back to the alignment shop since the steering wheel is off-center so I might have them adjust camber again. Do you think 1deg negative is a problem with groove tracking or premature wear? I see you run negative 1.5deg. How are your tires looking? BTW, I'm running .09deg of Toe-in on the front. They only need to adjust the tie rods to straighten the wheel, so you might have to fight them a bit to fix the camber issue. Yours is pretty far off. Do you have any adjustments available? That is NEG camber, right? Not positive? If it's positive you ought to do something to fix it. If it's negative and you don't have any adjustments you might see if they can slide the crossmember over a bit to try and even it up. I don't run my car on the street anymore, but I'd get 20-30K out of a set of relatively soft tires when I did. Your tires will last a LONG time at 5K per year, unless you're running DOT race tires. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgkurz Posted October 7, 2007 Share Posted October 7, 2007 They only need to adjust the tie rods to straighten the wheel, so you might have to fight them a bit to fix the camber issue. Yours is pretty far off. Do you have any adjustments available? That is NEG camber, right? Not positive? If it's positive you ought to do something to fix it. If it's negative and you don't have any adjustments you might see if they can slide the crossmember over a bit to try and even it up. I don't run my car on the street anymore, but I'd get 20-30K out of a set of relatively soft tires when I did. Your tires will last a LONG time at 5K per year, unless you're running DOT race tires. Thanks for the reply Jon and cygnusx1. My toe is at .09deg positive which is well within specs I believe. I think when I go back in to have the steering wheel centered I'll have them change the camber to negative 1.0deg. It'll probably cost me extra but I want it right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted October 7, 2007 Share Posted October 7, 2007 My Nissan 350Z came from the factory with -1.1 degrees of camber front and -1.0 in back. You won't see any appreciable wear from that camber setting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proxlamus© Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 Scandinavian flick anyone? whoo oversteer! LoL im subscribed to this thread.. I have initial understeer at low speeds when attempting a quick change of direction.. (thinking my goofing around in a parking lot at low speeds) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zmanco Posted October 8, 2007 Author Share Posted October 8, 2007 Thought I'd post an update. I went ahead and installed the MSA front camber bushings. On the alignment rack it turned out that the left could go all the way to 1.1 degrees neg while the right could only go to 0.6 neg. So we dialed the left back so they would both be the same. Turns out I have more in the rear than I thought (-1.4 left, -1.9 right). I must have some tweak to the chassis - big surprise in a 35 year old car with 230k miles on the chassis. I took it back out on the same track and things were much improved. While the tires were cool the car was very balanced. It was only loose when I wasn't smooth or made sudden changes with lift throttle in turns etc, - things I know I should avoid My initial tire pressures were 28 front/24 rear. As the tires got hot, the push came back, but nowhere near as much. I put 2 more pounds into the front and I think that helped a little, although it's hard to tell. Tire temps were within 15 degrees across the tread. One big difference is tires: previously I was running Yoko ES100, now I'm running Kumho MX which definitely have more grip. I think if I could get that last half degree of neg camber up front I'd be very happy with the car's balance for my use. I suppose the simple fix would be to slot the right front strut tower. But I'm thinking I may take it to a frame shop and see if they can't improve things. All in all, I'm very happy with the results of the camber bushings, and the improvement was well worth the modest $$$ spent. On a side note: I have to say that now all the big work of "building the platform" is behind me, I'm really enjoying fine tuning the car and my driving to get the most out of it. For example, I found that by braking and turning a little earlier on a few 3rd gear sweepers, I could carry more speed out as well as not abuse the tires as much. I guess "slow in - fast out" really is true Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 The camber in the rear is pretty typical of Z cars. When you lower them the rear gains much more neg camber than the front. Probably because the rear roll center is so high and the control arms are longer than the fronts. That rear camber issue is one of the reasons why it's so hard to get the front glued down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.