How to measure your camber?

INFORMATION Articles / Teg Tips
1

Just thought I’d post a cheap solution to constantly having to measure camber on lowered vehicles, have fun:

There are all kinds of fancy-smancy camber measuring devices. But you can do it quite accurately with stuff every garage should already have: a ruler and a square (that steel ‘L’ shaped thingie.)

Put the short side of the square flat on the ground (park on a flat surface). And push the other side up against the tire. If the square touches both sidewalls, then you have 0 camber; if it only touches the top sidewall, you have positive camber; and if it only touches the bottom sidewall, you have negative camber.

Now have a friend (or a couple of bricks) hold the square in place while you go find the ruler. Use the ruler to estimate where on the square the center of the wheel is - mark this point with a pencil or some tape. Now measure 7" above this point and mark it too - now measure the distance between the edge of the wheel and this point on the square. Make sure to hold the ruler parallel to the ground (maybe even use a bubble level). Record this value. Now, measure 7" below that center point, mark it, and measure the distance to the wheel again.

Now subtract those two measurements and multiply the result by four - this is your camber in degrees. How easy is that?

Example: The upper measurement is 13/16", and the lower measurement is 1/2". Since 13/16 > 1/2, the camber is negative.
13/16" - 1/2" = 5/16" difference.
5/16 * 4 = 20/16 = 1 and 1/4 degrees of negative camber.

This is usually easier to do if you cut out a round piece of plywood to hold against the wheel - then you can just measure the distance to the square between any two points that are 14" vertically apart, and you don’t have to worry about centering the square on the wheel.

Could you explain how the heck you came up with that and how do we convert that to the Metric system for the Non-US’ers???

The actual equation would be:

angle = arctan( h / l )
where h = the difference between the two measurements
and l = the vertical distance between the two measurements.

We used 1/4" = 1 degree because it’s simple. Then we picked 14" because it just so happens that arctan (1/4" / 14") = 1 degree. As long as h<<l, the tangent function is reasonably linear; so we can make the approximation of just saying that:
angle = 4 * h (in inches)

To do this in metric, we need to just pick a h to represent one degree, and make sure that the required l is within reason.
If we wanted to pick 5mm for h, then l would be 286 mm.
If we wanted to pick 10mm for h, then l would be 573mm.

That’s probably the best: Measure two points 57 cm vertically apart, and you get one degree of camber for every one centimeter of difference between the measurements.

2

measuring your camber at home can be a good idea. My father has a camber/caster gauge that I sometimes use. However I’ve found that its VERY difficult to get accurate and consistant results…even using this simple device which is designed for this exact use you can get wrong numbers.

If the ground isn’t exactly level… or who knows what else… you can get strange readings. I spent a couple hours measuring and tuning my rear camber before I went in to get the car aligned. Even taking very good care to use a level surface, take many readings…etc…etc… I was still 0.25deg off of what West End measured my camber to be. True, 0.25deg isn’t much, and both sides were 0.25deg off in the same direction… but still, it wasn’t exact.

I definitely suggest people try this, its good experience, and can give you a good idea of your specs, just don’t be surprised if your measurements are off, possibly by an amount that would matter.

3

Yes, I can not stress how important it is to have a level surface, and make sure your measurements are “exact.”

4

ive always wanted to do this but never tried to calculate the degrees. i guess that 4 is the magic number.
ive been pretty good at eye-balling the camber up to around .2, but dont even think about toe or caster unless you have a real good method as those are a bitch to do. take it to a shop!

91IntegGS speaking of finalizing on settings, whats your follow up on West End? i still think its gonna be a very long time before i decide on settings i would want him to finalize. corner weighting comes to mind…

5

Well, unfortunately i’m dirt poor… so I didn’t have Darin adjust my rear camber, I set that myself. Using my camber/caster gauge I set the rear to 1.25 deg neg. However once Darin measured it, it was actually 1.5 deg neg. After talking with him we decided to set the front at 1.25 deg neg. Mainly my settings are this way since tire wear is a huge issue for me. I don’t have the $$ to be replacing tires all the time, so I want my tires to last. But I don’t want to run zero camber…

It seems that ideally I would run more camber up front (whereas i’m running more in the back). However I didn’t want to pay the extra $$ for Darin to adjust the rear camber. More camber up front means more worn out tires… but also it seems that fore a more neutral handling car (especially w/ a front drive car) you would want more neg camber in front than in the rear, just to help balance things out. After leaving West End I was still very satisfied, mainly by Darin’s service. He’s amazing. He actually CARES about you and your car. He wants you to be happy.

I previously had my car aligned at a local shop. They won’t set any camber. So, it turned out my front camber was around 2.0 neg and the rear about 1.25 neg. I like my settings now a LOT more (although I have changed other suspension parts and tires…so its hard to say exactly what did what).

I’ve come to the point where I’m tired of my car being my main form of transportation. I don’t want to have my alignment settings dictated by the fact that my car spends a lot of time just doing mundane freeway driving and that this will wear out tires if you’re running extreme alignment specs. Ideally I’d really like to put some Vison arms on my car and set the alignment a little more extreme (more caster and more camber) and not have to worry about tire wear and practicallity. But either way…West End is awesome, I definitley recommend Darin to everyone here.

6

You need to get the toe alinged too. camber works your tires out, but toe is the true killer, Kinda like aids. It’s not the killer, it just allows the immune system to die by infecting its host (helper T cell). therefore the immune system is weak enough for even the common cold to kill the person that is infected with Aids. Then your parents have to pick out a headstone, and come to their son’s funneral. It is a very sad moment to see once you well spontinlogical young man to die because he was sleepin with that b!tch who slept around for kix. All you little boy ever wanted was to have a firm foundation for a life long relationship. :sad: I mean, I would have givin my life for his, but he is gone now. I got to go guys. :argh: