Recommend a camber gauge?

[Fishy Dave]

I have a Clio 172 (phase 2) that I use for trackdays and sprints, and i'm looking for a way of measuring the camber on the front wheels.

The car is lowered slightly (25mm IIRC) on Eibach Pro springs, with standard shocks, I fitted adjustable camber bolts to the upper hole of the struts, to approximately 2 degrees.

This has evened out tyre wear slightly (saves scuffing the shoulders on track as much), although it is certainly twitchy under power, with more torque steer!

I have been into a couple of companies about checking and adjusting camber, with Renault wanting around £80 and the independant company wanting over £100!!!!! Rather than giving the company this money as a one off i'd rather spend this money on a tool myself, question is would I get the necessary accuracy?

I have noticed a few makes on the Demon Tweeks site, with the Dunlop one looking pretty good, plus at the bottom end of the scale we have this one - www.tooled-up.com/Product.asp?PID=134038&MAN=Sealey-Magnetic-Camber-Gauge

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Cheers, Dave

[GreenV8S]

My home-made camber gauge is accurate to 0.05 degrees and cost about £7 in parts, made from a plumb line and a couple of steel rules. Why pay anything more?

[Fishy Dave]

Sounds good, would you mind sharing the details with me?

[GreenV8S]

It's pretty straightforward. I used a 600mm steel rule leaned up against the side of the wheel (couple of small spacers so it sits against the rim not the tyre) for an upright, two 150mm rules rivetted to the ends of ths to form arms sticking out sideways, a plumb line tied to the outer end of the top arm so it hangs level with the outer end of the lower arm.

With zero camber the plumb weight is exactly level with the outer end of the lower arm. As you increase the -ve camber the weight moves inwards. Because the plumb line is 600mm long, 10mm at the bottom represents exactly 1 degree of camber. The lower rule is marked in 0.5mm increments so I have a resolution of 0.05 degrees.

[Fishy Dave]

That all makes sense to me, great, I will have a go at making this next week, appreciate the help.

[leorest]

Apologies for being pedantic but...
It'd be even more accurate if you substituted 573mm for 600
Nice elegant, and simple method though, and 600 is an easy number to remember and only introduces less than 5% error.

[GreenV8S]

leorest said:

600 is an easy number to remember

That's the important thing for me, but it's a fair point.

[leorest]

GreenV8S said:

leorest said: 600 is an easy number to remember That's the important thing for me, but it's a fair point.

Bearing in mind you are reading a plumb-line against a scale with oscillations and parallax to contend with, five hundredths of a degree error is square root of fück all difference. I was just showing off that I can still remember my school boy trig
I use one of these but I only bought the metalwork from Demon Tweeks because I liberated the inclinometer from work
It's a flash looking piece of kit and measures to 0.1 degrees but if I had to buy the electronics bit as well I would have gone with your method!

BTW link doesn't work as the moment because Website is being updated! The pictures smaller but at least this works
Leo
!!!Doh! both links failed! Try later when they've finished updating the site!!!

>> Edited by leorest on Sunday 9th April 10:23

[GreenV8S]

It is possible to use the full 0.05 degree (erm ... 0.052 degree? ) resolution but it takes lots of patience and grovelling round on knees getting everything positioned perfectly and waiting for it all to stop moving. I don't normally use anything like that precision, I'm normally nudging things round in multiples of quarter of a degree to see what effect it has. The 'standard' settings normally have a tolerance of +/- a quarter of a degree too. But it's nice to know that in principle, the el cheapo home made camber gauge is capable of providing much much better resolution if you ever need it.

[ngr]

Unless you have a perfectly flat floor I suspect you will get more than your 5% difference side to side anyway. If you want to be that accurate you need a perfectly flat set up patch and solid set up wheels. The feet on the bottom of the set up wheels allow them to be set level with each other before the car is set up.

[GreenV8S]

Yes, you definitely need a flat level floor to work on.

[Piston Broken]

Hi Guys, i bought my camber gauge from here.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dl

Great forum by the way.

Cheers.

[grp4escort]

Plenty of Camber/Castor gauges here...

http://www.motorsport-tools.com/index.php?main_pag...

[Avocet]

I used to have a variation on the plumb line. It's just a spirit level with a bubble going "crosswise" as well as the usual longitudinal one. Lots of cheap spirit levels have them.

I have tapped an M6 x 1.0 bolt through one end and then I just count the number of turns to bring the bubble to the middle of its tube. Each turn of the bolt is exactly 1.0mm and with a typical hex head bolt, it's accurate to 1 flat!

[tr7v8]

I bought the Longacre camber/caster guage from a guy on E bay works very well.

[2bars]

I bought one of the Sealey gauges about a month ago and tested it against a known 2 degree angle and it measured 3 degrees and at 3 degrees it was off the scale at plus 6 degrees.... Can anyone else corroborate this or is it just me?

[2bars]

I bought one of the Sealey gauges about a month ago and tested it against a known 2 degree angle and it measured 3 degrees and at 3 degrees it was off the scale at plus 6 degrees.... Can anyone else corroborate this or is it just me?

[GreenV8S]

2bars said:

I bought one of the Sealey gauges about a month ago and tested it against a known 2 degree angle and it measured 3 degrees and at 3 degrees it was off the scale at plus 6 degrees.... Can anyone else corroborate this or is it just me?

Seems unlikely to me, I'd be more inclined to suspect a mistake in your test procedure.

[2bars]

Test procedure was to create a right angled traingle out of 3 steel rules base 20mm, height 600mm which if my maths is correct gives me tan 20/600 equals 1.9 degrees between the long side and the hypotenuse. Clamped it in a vice with the 600mm side vertical (set with a spirit level) zeroed the gauge against the same side then measured the hypotenuse as 3 degrees. Repeated the test at 30mm base length which should give 2.8 degrees and it went off scale - 6 degrees plus. Surprised I could have got my test so wrong as to get a 100% error. I'll go and check my triangle with a protractor.....! Have you tested one? I don't want to rubbish the tool without getting some corroboration, equally if it doesn't measure accurately it's useful for folk to know.

[GreenV8S]

2bars said:

Test procedure was to create a right angled traingle out of 3 steel rules base 20mm, height 600mm which if my maths is correct gives me tan 20/600 equals 1.9 degrees between the long side and the hypotenuse. Clamped it in a vice with the 600mm side vertical (set with a spirit level) zeroed the gauge against the same side then measured the hypotenuse as 3 degrees. Repeated the test at 30mm base length which should give 2.8 degrees and it went off scale - 6 degrees plus. Surprised I could have got my test so wrong as to get a 100% error. I'll go and check my triangle with a protractor.....! Have you tested one? I don't want to rubbish the tool without getting some corroboration, equally if it doesn't measure accurately it's useful for folk to know.

Seems reasonable in principle. Can you give a bit more detail about how you arranged the rulers? I suspect you may have accidentally offset one of the sides by the thickness of the ruler, but no way of knowing without more details.