Camber gauge

R

ram5ay

Member
nice, technology these days eh! back in my day we used to use a bit of string with a weight on it and a protractor. :wink:
 
campbellju

campbellju

Moderators
Staff member
Load of rubbish :lol:

I looked into them when I was setting up my camber and short of £100 there is nothing worth buying. This is scaled to +-6degs, and accurate to 0.25-0.5 degs at best. It gives you a feel for camber than a reading.

I made my own in the end, I've been meaning to post up about but never had time. Here's the summarised version (To stop Rob falling asleep whilst reading my mails)

Tools
Good engineering ruler, cotton, nut, support plank.

1. Level floor
2. Tie the nut to the end of the cotton to make a plumb line
3. Tie plumb line to plank
4. Rest plank on car with the plumb line crossing the centre line of the wheel.
5. With a level floor and true vertical line, you've created you should have the folowing:

Plumb

________________________________ Plank
¦ ____________________________
¦ /
¦ ¦ Car
¦ ¦________
¦ ______ ¦
T¦-->/______/ ¦
¦ / / ¦
¦ / / ¦
¦ / Wheel / ¦
¦ / Rim / ¦
¦ / / ¦____________________
¦ / /
B¦> /______/
0 /______/

6. Leave a gap for the plumb so it is free from the floor and tyre.
7. Measure the length of your rim to 1 mm (Call this y)
8. Measure the Top centre of the from rim to plumb line to 0.5mm.
8. Measure the Bottom centre of the from rim to plumb line to 0.5mm.
9. For those who remember trig from school you've created a right angled triangle with a Hypotenuse and one side.
10. I used excel in my pocket pc to take all the measurements and simplify caluclation but pen and paper will work just as well. Here is an old example I have to hand at work.

front near front off rear near rear off
wheel 438 438 438 438
top (t) 29 38.5 23 20
bottom (b) 23 37.5 22.5 18

The camber was then calculated using this code:
=DEGREES(ASIN((b-t)/438))

camber -0.78 -0.13 -0.07 -0.26

If you can be accurate to 0.5mm on a good engineering ruler then this method is accurate to 0.1degs, far more than you'd ever need for a road setup. To impove accuracy, take each reading 3 times and repeat each camber reading with the car 180degs (to take out any inaccuracis created by a less than perfect floor.

With a laptop/pocket PC to hand, I can take a camber measurement in a few minutes accurate to 0.1degs that costs nothing. 8)

Cheers,
Jim
 
campbellju

campbellju

Moderators
Staff member
My line diagram has been fudged by the forum :x . I can't be bothered trying again today but hopefully you get the idea Steve.

Jim
 
stevepudney

stevepudney

GTiROC CHAIRMAN
Staff member
Yup, I had wondered if they were a pile of poo, thanks for the confirmation :wink:

And yes I kind of get the cotton & plank idea, cheers. I'm sure your "sticky" write up will be much better though :wink:

Steve
 
O

Odin

Guest
Or just take it down your local tyre place :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol: .


I couldn't be @rsed with all that mate :shock: .




rob
 
campbellju

campbellju

Moderators
Staff member
It's take me longer to drive down now. :wink:

Setup plumb line, measure 2 readings and tap into excel. Hey presto a camber reading to 0.1degs. All you need is a level floor.

Its that easy. The trick is changing it accurately. Unfortunately most garages will setup a car to +/-0.5degs at best.
 
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