Rear wheel camber

[Guest F14CRAZY]

I don't think this has been discussed, but how come with about every Reatta I've encountered (didn't take much notice at the Homecoming, though), the rear wheels seem to be leaning inward? (negative camber?). I don't think the tires are wearing unevenly due to that, but it doesn't look very good. I've replaced my rear struts on my coupe and none of the bushings are loose, but the camber remains. The 60 and our other coupe is the same.

Can this be corrected?

[Vincent Vega]

When I had the alignment done after replacing shocks/struts, they had to adjust rear toe and camber. I'm not sure how far off it was.

[Guest F14CRAZY]

I'll check the manual, but I didn't notice any way to adjust the camber

[bwarren]

When I recently had my alignment done at a Buick dealership, I asked about the rear camber and they said the only way to correct it is to replace the leaf spring as the original has lost some of its flex or starting to let go from its mount at the strut location, causing the camber to go negative. And they said there were no mechanical adjustments to correct rear camber. I don?t know if this is true or a song and dance to sell me a new leaf spring. Anyway it?s not that bad right now so it will stay as is.

[George Madsen]

Too bad rear camber is not adjustable on Reattas. Unless the bolt holes in the control arm could be elongated or a cam bolt be used at the strut lower achoring position the only solution may be to replace a whole raft of parts.

[Guest F14CRAZY]

Hmmm, it sounds like oval-ing out the holes would be about the only solution, unless replacing the leak spring would work but that looks rather difficult to me.

I may look into it this winter. My coupe has always had the negative camber but it's more obvious with the 17''s. I can't envision the rear struts and all at the moment; I'll have a look soon.

[Vincent Vega]

I know the guy who did mine was working on the rear suspension for a while. I'm not sure what he did.

[Guest Greg Ross]

Replacing the composite spring will do nothing for camber. The only adjustment on the rears is toe-in on the lower control arm.

To improve camber the only option is to replace every bushing in the rear end. With age, weight and natural offset the deflection is going to appear as camber, all those bushings are going to wear and distort in the direction of the normal load, it's a natural.

I was able to buy all these bushings several years ago in Louisiana when I did the rear suspension over.

[padgett]

I went throught this in depth in 2001 or 2002. There are shims you can buy that go behind the rear wheel bearing to decrease the rear camber (I went from over two degrees to less than one).

That said, the negative camber (top in) does not seem to bother anything. After I completed the project I happened to measure the camber on our Bonneville with about 40,000 miles on the 225x60x16 Michelin X-Ones that were wearing nice and evenly and it had over two degrees of camber.

Apparently with modern radials and the light load on the rear, it just does not matter.

[Guest F14CRAZY]

Padgett: I remember you mentioning that now. What's the source for these shims?

[Guest tomt]

After having a Spitfire, TR-4 and TR-6, if my camber is bad, I'd never notice it. At least it doesn't tuck under the car.

[2seater]

There are ride height measurements in the manual and once upon a time there were shims made to fit under the ends of the spring to correct the height. Shimming the spring will raise the rear and while it might correct the camber, it seems to be the opposite direction most people would like to see. Shims for the spindle make more sense, and may even be necessary for a lowered car? Some negative camber will be good for handling as long as the tire wear is reasonable. Radials are made to lay the tread flat on the road even when cornering, that's why they generally have a handing advantage, so a few degrees of camber will likely not bother them much as Padgett stated.

[padgett]

Ones I used came from NAPA but needed a little grinding to clear AFAIR.