Reply With Quotebugger. so the subframes were already moved as far out as possible and you couldn't get any more negative camber, or square up the casters? or did the aligner **** you around.
Volkswagen Enthusiast
Subframe alignment was confirmed to be a waste of time and money. Mk4 golf with 215k has beyond average front wheel geometry.
Volkswagenist
bugger. so the subframes were already moved as far out as possible and you couldn't get any more negative camber, or square up the casters? or did the aligner **** you around.
Volkswagen Enthusiast
Yeh sorry, I should have elaborated on my brash comment before.The subframe alignment was not a total waste of time.Originally Posted by sambb
The castor on the front was greatly improved and equalised. Still under spec thou as stated by VW by 10-20 minutes.
Camber is still woeful, i actually lost a few minutes on one side. but he tried to equalise it as best he could.
Based on this alignment the rear is actually very good.
So overall everything is pretty sweet. I just need to get the TT control arms and spindles to dial in some more camber.
Or I guess some camber/castor plates but I think they make it a solid mount up top and reduce ride height.
Volkswagenist
Its hard to say without seeing the car but if you stick your head under the front, have a look at the wishbones. Look at the relative heights of the inner wishbone pivot and also the height of the ball joint pivot. It could be that the Shine springs (being higher) have created a situation where the ball joint pivot is markedly lower than the inner pivot. That's not a bad thing for roll centre correction but it will have the effect of taking out camber. I'm thinking your pos camber figures are due to a possible increased ride height and that's why you can't make spec. For the shine springs to really work you'll need (like you said) to find camber at the top of the strut with adjustable tops, or at the bottom with adjustable ball joints but be careful with the latter because it strtches the driveshaft joints to achieve this and with you higher springs the driveshafts may not be sitting level which can make this situation even worse eg they are already strtched a bit. Best to do it at the top then.
Volkswagen Enthusiast
The difference in height between the ball joint and inner control Arm bushing is minimal. Ball joint higher thou.
I did not know about the stretching of the drive shaft joints with the install of TT control arms etc. Do you mean installing the TT control arms onto the original 1.8t spindles?
Or installing both TT control arms and TT spindles? I thought the TT spindles changed the drive shaft height to be slightly higher, as per pic.
Can you explain this a bit more. How are they stretched exactly?
The other thing I'm worried about camber plates is that it's my understanding that it deletes the top mount bushing and it becomes a solid mount, am I correct?
Volkswagenist
The reason why I was thinking that a higher ride height was the possible culprit for your lack of front neg camber is because you'd mentioned Shine springs. The Shine ethos was about running the front higher than most. This was to keep the lower control arms/wishbones at an angle where they were either level or with the ball joint side slightly lower than the inboard pivot. This kind of geometry keeps the roll centre higher (closer to the centre of gravity) and results in a car with high geometric roll stiffness which means it resists roll due to good geometry rather than really high elastic stiffness eg springs or bars. Its a good way to make fast road cars. The other positive spin offs of running this way is that usually your steering arms will sit more level too which minimises bump steer compared to very low cars where the car will toe out on bump and just be plain scary if it happens mid corner. However your ride height doesn't look high because your control arms are more or less level. You have a choice re camber. You could lower the car more which will give you some more static neg camber, but you'd knowingly be moving your roll centre down so you'd have to run very stiff to counter that, and at the same time you'd mess up your steering arm angles. Regardless of what spring rates you throw at it you have it at a pretty optimum height judging by the control arm angles. So to get it really cornering you'd need more camber in the ways we said above.
What I said before about drive shaft stretch: My mod I did to my lower control arms was to modify them so that TT ball joints would fit inside them. These corrected the roll centre ( I could run about 10mm lower without changing the factory level lower control arm geometry) but also had elongated slots in them that gave me the ability to effectively lengthen the control arm to give more neg camber. In going from OEM neg 1 degree camber to neg 2/1/4 though I have lengthened the lower control arm by about 10mm. So if the control arm gets longer, so to the driveshaft has to extend to accommodate that and it does that by the ball/knuckes inside the CV's and inners sliding apart. I thought maybe you'd be running driveshaft angles that had the arm sloping down diagonally. Pythagorus's theorem and all that stuff but that kind of angle would be slightly elongating a driveshaft and then if you go and slide the ball joints outward a further 10mm then that driveshaft mech can get into an operating range that its not built for. That's what I was referring to. But from the pic your driveshaft angles are close to level (driveshaft mechs are in a more compressed state than if the car was at full droop) so you could probably get away with such a mod.
It seems you may have been thinking about TT spindles/hubs which is a bit different to TT ball joints that I had mentioned. I don't know a lot about it but from what I can gather early TT spindles were a good mod because they gave good camber gain. What this means is that for each degree of roll of the car, the geometries that the spindle induce are better able to maintain or actually increase the neg camber on the outside front tyre or at least for a bit longer than normal hubs. Standard run of the mill spindles have poor camber gain so as you push it and the car starts to roll, the outside front will quickly eat through any static camber it may have had and start to go positive. Considering that most people run the latter sort of spindle, that's why its important to not go mental with your lowering. You may gain static neg camber that way but the car will only have to roll a couple of degrees (which it will do easily because you've mashed the roll centre geometries) and it will all be gone. eg. Because you've set the car up to always run right on this threshold it can go bad very quickly. But if the car has better control arm angles to begin with its sort of like buying yourself time (or a bit more roll) before the neg camber you have gets eaten up and starts to go turd. The caveat to that is you can run knowingly low and run really stiff springs to negate the roll from being a factor but unless you have some seriously trick damping it will ride horribly on the street and at any rate your steering will probably be terrible.
You're mk4 golf aren't you. I believe K mac make infinitely adjustable camber/caster top plates. One of their selling points for my car was that they do not alter the strut height which may or may not be the case with yours. You're looking at $500+ for those though.
Volkswagenist
This was my TT ball joint mod saga: DIY adjustable camber ball joints mod
Volkswagen Enthusiast
Thanks for the reply.
I am pretty sure that is not how it works with the mk4 as it's geometry is mega average from factory. Any lowering of the car with stock LCA/spindles induces positive camber. The lower you go the worse it gets. As we can see wth my shine setup, I am already positive on one side!! I would love to see someones alignment specs after lowering 1.5"-2" on stock spindle/LCA. Anyone care to share?
Ahh I see what your talking about now, how your mod lengthens the control arm and the concerns regarding the drive shafts. This would not be an issue using the TT LCA as it would not increase the overall length. Your mod is very ingenious thou. I'm surprised I have not seen the thread before.
Nah this is incorrect. The spindles don't allow any camber adjustment. The Camber adjustment is all in the TT LCA. The benefit of the TT spindle is that the hub sits higher, which in turn allows the car to be lowered an inch with no dramatic effect to the roll centre.
Yes they do and I've read they have no change to ride height which is good. But I have also heard that they are noisy as hell (as are all camber plates) and are a total nightmare to install, for reasons I do not know. But based on this thread... Anyone here tried K-Mac camber kits?
I really appreciate your replies. I am definitely going to get the TT spindles and LCA's. This allows for the best of everything oem and hopefully I should be able to get 2 degrees neg camber. The added bonus will be not having the harshness of camber plates. I will keep this thread updated.
Last edited by Sirocco20348; 23-07-2017 at 10:16 PM.
Volkswagenist
Cool. Re the TT spindles, camber gain doesn't mean camber adjustment or the fact that you just install them and voila you have more camber. Camber gain results from the placement of the pivots on the hub eg where the ball joint locates into the hub and how the strut tube that fits inside the hub sleeve is angled. You may be right regarding the fact that you can lower the car further on TT hubs and retain good geometry - that in a nutshell is basically what roll centre correction is all about and would come from the lower ball joint position being different. But the camber gain comes from how the hub dynamcally angles itself as roll /strut compression happens. eg will it hold its static camber as the chassis rolls or will it go quickly into positive.
Yeah the ffeedback about kmac tops is what made me look for other was to get my camber. Once they are sorted they re mat to be fine but tricky to get sorted
Volkswagenist
ps im not drunk my keyboard is playing up
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