My swing axle Vintage came to me with a noticable negative camber. It's obviously lowered but not radically... There's a sqooge more than an inch of rubber showing between the top edge of the rim and the wheel opening cutout. I've paid attention to other replicas and they don't seem to have such an obvious negative camber (Example: James Bond Siver's Beck in Hawaii squats lower than mine)
Are there decambering suspension adjustments that can be made without raising the body height?
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Carl---order a camber compensator that is made to hold the rear wheels straight, without the negative camber. Do a search for that.
I have had one on my car for 5 years. I just switched tires ---the old ones were worn evenly
all accross the tread so they were held perfectly straight to wear like that. They weren't worn out either---just 5-6 years old.
Let me know if a search fails to show you info on camber compensator and I'll email it to you.
That on the back plus a front sway bar makes my car drive like it was on rails!
Carl, the camber compensator I put on my VS moved the camber from slightly negative to neutral and raised the rear slightly , which is not bad in my case because my driveway causes many cars to touch if not careful. Also the roads here can have humps and bumps that I would worry about if my car was too low. A sidewinder or some of the other exhaust systems or sumps I've seen would make me nervous around here.
The stock front anti-sway bar I installed seemed to make it less jittery over 60 mph. as well.
With the swingaxle rear suspension, resetting the torsion bars/spring plates to decamber the wheels will raise the car up somewhat. You could raise the trans/engine assembly 1" (a different rear trans cradle and I think a front mount adapter would be used) and that would allow the car to be lower, but I don't know if there's enough room in the engine bay; the aircleaners and shroud may hit the body and engine lid. Then there's the issue of the shifter linkage.
Assuming you have swing arms and not IRS:
Get a camber compensator.
It should fix your squatting problem (at least on your car - for you.....not so sure) and is relatively easy to install - a couple of hours at most, if you take a couple of coffee brakes during the install.
What would help on IRS with the camber issue? Mine seems more negative camber on the drivers side also, but the car sits even. Thanks
If you truly have IRS (with propeller shafts and CV joints) and one side has more camber than the other, then most likely the pan has been hit in the distant past and the diagonal arm and spring plate(s) on that side have been bent out of whack. This is usually an easy fix (on a Beetle sedan), but in order to get the spring plates off with a speedster body you have to remove the torsion bar end cap and to do THAT, on a replica, you have to remove the body (since there are no holes in the body to allow the torsion bar end cap and torsion bar to be removed with the body on). Once the end cap is out of the way you can remove the spring plate(s) and replace them with straight ones (if they are bent). [Note that I pluralize spring plates because some cars had one per side and others had two per side].
If the spring plates are OK and only the diagonal arm is bent, then replacing that AND making sure that the diagonal arm mount has not been bent on the pan is enough to get you back in business.
As an alternative, you can forget all the above if it's not too far out of camber and just use wedges on the spring-plate-to-hub-mount to get it back into alignment to specs. It'll take an adventuresome alignment tech to figure out what to do and he will probably have to make suitable wedges (shims) for it, but it can be done relatively easily.
so question.......on a swing axle set up if I look at lowering the ass by adjusting the torsion bars, I'm gonna get some negative camber correct?
I need to get the back down about 2". What I gain from adjusting the bars, would I loose with a CC?
I wanted to do a tranny lift, but with me going water-cooled. I really need any extra height that I can get.
It's not necessarily a bent part. There is some camber adjustment in the spring plate to IRS trailing arm connection, 2 maybe 3 degrees. If it isn't the same side to side, you might notice it. The spring plate holes are slotted to nominally set the toe, but there is enough slop that the spring plate to trailing arm connection can be rotated a bit. Rotating changes the camber angle, positive or negative depending on direction. If the two parts form an angle like this: ^, you're adding negative camber, if they angle like this: v, you're adding positive camber. Changing the camber like this adds toe out regardless of direction, so you'll have to reset that as well. Difficult part is getting both set at once since the same bolts control both settings.
Changing the ride height of a swing axle always changes the camber angles, lowering always increases negative camber. A CC will raise the rear a bit because you're adding some extra spring rate at rest, but it won't necessarily cancel out all the torsion bar drop.
