My New Ridetech Suspension. Holy positive camber!

[old66tiger]

Just installed my new Ridetech arms and spindles and I am coming up with 2.5 degrees on one side and 3.5 degrees on the other. The tires tip out about 1" further on the top than the bottom. This seems way too much. I don't want it sitting in the dirt so I brought it up a bit with the adjustable shocks. Afterall, this is what these are supposed to be used for.

[Ron Sutton]

Pictures please

[Rod]

Pictures please

yep

[old66tiger]

What do you want pictures of? the upper arms, the reading on the angle finder?

[Rod]

upper arm mounting, an angle shot of the upper and lowers with the wheel off to see the assembly, things like that

[old66tiger]

Here are a few shots.

[old66tiger]

Now with the photos. Hope this tells the story. How much shim is OK? at this rate with experimental shims in there, I am at 1/2" before I can see it being close.

[marolf101x]

The cross shaft has a built-in 1/8" offset, so if you flip it around you can lose at least one shim.

[old66tiger]

Are they the correct arms?

[old66tiger]

The arms on the V8 TV GTO don't have the same look as these do.

[Ron Sutton]

Good photos of a-arms. Can you show us a shot from the front, with the car at ride height, with the wheels on, so we can see the camber?

[GeoffP]

Edit - I checked the instructions on RideTech's site and believe my statement to be incorrect.

[old66tiger]

I measured the distance from the inside of the A-Arm cross shaft to the center of the ball joint and that comes in at 9". The speedtech arms measured a similar distance so I am thinking that the arms just had a minor design change in the angle of the arm. Not sure yet. I measured the top of the spindle from the mounting surface of the wilwood disc brake bracket and this is where the difference is coming in. The tall Ridetech spindles are measuring an additional 3/4" over the stock a-body spindle from the brake mounting to the center of the ball joint hole. Either the arm needs to be shorter or I have the wrong spindle. I am estimating 1/2" - 3/4" of shim to get this thing close to 0 camber

[old66tiger]

Here are some pictures. The left side of the car is with a 3/16" shim plus 2 additional washers. Yes, my stick is straight and was made plumb by my angle finder. The right side is without any shims.

[Ron Sutton]

I measured the distance from the inside of the A-Arm cross shaft to the center of the ball joint and that comes in at 9". The speedtech arms measured a similar distance so I am thinking that the arms just had a minor design change in the angle of the arm. Not sure yet. I measured the top of the spindle from the mounting surface of the wilwood disc brake bracket and this is where the difference is coming in. The tall Ridetech spindles are measuring an additional 3/4" over the stock a-body spindle from the brake mounting to the center of the ball joint hole. Either the arm needs to be shorter or I have the wrong spindle. I am estimating 1/2" - 3/4" of shim to get this thing close to 0 camber

I think you have figured out the problem on your own. The good news is that Ridetech has excellent customer support, knowledge & integrity, so if those guys made a mistake, they will take care of you. But, you'll need to be patient for a few days, as I suspect they'll be back in the office on Tuesday.

That is the good thing about having a vendor so involved in the sport & involved in these Forums. Their reputation is on the line with every customer. I believe Ridetech is at the top, not because they make far & away the best product, but because they offer a great product, the best service & support and stand behind what they do.

Sorry you had these troubles, but I think we all have had these issues from time to time. Best wishes.

[old66tiger]

I would hope there would be some logical solution. I can't imagine that there is much of a need to design 3 degrees of camber into a spindle unless the arm is shorter to compensate for it.

[old66tiger]

5/8" shim gets me to +.3 degrees on drivers side and -.6 degrees on passenger side. This is with a digital angle finder as measured with a straight edge against the wheel - perpendicular. Any more shim on the drivers side and I will hit the steering column shaft.

[killer69]

What was wrong with the Speedtech arms that you though you had to change them?

[old66tiger]

I stand corrected on one of my prior posts. The Ridetech spindles are measuring only 0.100" greater than the factory spindles from the upper mounting boss to the ball joint hole. The arms measure almost 1/2" longer from the cross shaft to the center of the ball joint than the Speedtech arms. Add these two together and there is the difference.

[ragtop1968rs]

I'm having the same problem. Installed strong arms, coilovers and tru turn. I have 1/2" of shims and I still need some more. I have not been to the alignment shop yet. I'm changing my rear suspension now.

[old66tiger]

Is yours the latest and greatest arms with the no-grease bushing and off-set key cross-shafts? My bushings are close to the headers on the drivers side and I wonder what that is going to do to the reliability of these no-grease bushing? with 5/8" of shims, I still need another 3/16" to get to about -0.5 degrees of camber. All of the literature that I have read about these new arms, the offset bushing was supposed to get rid of using excessive amounts of shims.

"We create extra caster potential by adjusting the fore and aft position of the ball joints. At the same time we make sure the wheel is properly positioned in the wheel-well so your new 18" wheels fit like they should. The balljoint camber travel is re-centered to accommodate the new lowered ride height so the ball joint doesn’t bind during extreme suspension movement."

[ragtop1968rs]

Mine are the older style. I think I bought them last December.

[marolf101x]

Ok fellas. . .Now that we are back in the shop I've had a chance to review our A-Body platform and report back with up-to-date information.

In an effort to keep refining our product and provide you with the best parts we can supply we recently made a few revisions to the control arms for the 64-72 GM A-Body, the 67-69 GM F-Body, the 68-74 GM X-Body, and the 78-88 GM G-Body.
Since this thread is about the A-Body I will concentrate on that platform.

The following changes were made to the upper control arms:
-injection molded self lubricating Delrin bushings
-forged steel cross shaft with integrated caster slugs, nitrocarburized black
-one bend was added to the tube (we used to angle cut one side of the tube, by adding a bend we can straight cut the tube. . .this was done purely for manufacturing efficiency)

Here are the changes to the lower control arm:
-injection molded self lubricating Delrin bushings

All control arms are built on the exact same jigs we've used for years. There are zero changes to the geometry of the A-Body platform within this revision.

Caster:
Adding caster can decrease the number of shims required. . .again, this is on a car-to-car basis. By adding shims to the rear mounting point you are moving the ball joint back and in. Correct caster is critical to attaining proper camber settings.
Typically you want as much caster as you can get. 5 degrees is good, if your chassis allows you to get there.

Camber:
A typical street car or daily driver should have around 0.5 degrees negative (you can offset for road crown if you’d like).
A typical autocross or road race car will need 1.0 degrees negative (sometimes more, depending on what the car is doing. Remember, camber is only there to keep the tire flat to the pavement in a turn).
As one would guess both of these set-ups require a different shim pack to reach the stated goals.
You can add as many or as few shims as you need to reach your alignment settings. Sometimes you are limited by the frame mounts, sometimes by header clearance.


Number of Shims:
The number of shims required really depends on what alignment specs you are after, and the condition of the OE chassis. Many of these chassis (especially big block cars) have "sagged" over the years, thereby pulling the upper control arm mounting points toward the center of the car.
If you are going for a "street" alignment setting and your chassis has sagged a bit, you may not need many shims at all.
If you are going for an "autocross" or "road course" alignment and your chassis has not moved much, you may require a bunch of shims.
If we were to make a "shorter" control arm we may reduce the amount of shims required for one situation, but the arms would not allow a proper alignment in another situation. In essence it's better to fit everything with a few more shims, than not be able to fit 20% of the vehicles out there.

We have 6 A-Body platforms in our fleet. . .all with different drive trains, and all with different shim requirements.

[MCB Matt]

As always, Ridetech got right on it and upgraded the arms, great job guys!

Matt