[atari4x4]

Good Afternoon AZ Vitara Crew.

Welcome to Camber Bolt Install 101

Here is how I went about installing a pair of camber bolts to my Vitara.

Tools & Parts Required:

1 Pair of Vitara Camber Bolts
Wheel Brace
Jack
Axle Stand
17mm Spanner X 2 or 17mm socket
15mm Spanner
13mm Spanner
1 Wheel Alignment booked prior.

Time taken with pics: 1/2hr





Vitara Camber Bolts


They work by having this offset "lobe" & locator tag. the actual "bolts" are thinner than the standard strut bolts but the "lobe" part is what locates the knuckle in the strut, by dialing it around you can add or remove camber.






Start by putting your Vitara in gear with the handbrake on.

Crack the wheel nuts using the Wheel Brace.

Cause my Vitara has sick gay IFS flex my Jack runs out of travel if i lift it off the chassis, so I go off the hole in the bottom of the Calmini wishbone. Only jack it high enough to get the wheel off the ground & a axle/chassis stand under the chassis rail at the rear of the wheel arch.




Remove the wheel nuts & remove the wheel, you are greeted with this mess... really need to give it a good clean after the weekend.


WHILE THE WHEEL IS OFF HAVE A QUICK LOOK AT THE REST OF THE AREA.

I noticed I'm missing an E clip of my brake line/strut bracket.

Loosen off the top & bottom strut bolts that hold the strut to the knuckle with the 17mm spanners & remove the top strut bolt.


Now feed the camber bolt in from the front of the Vitara, paying close attention not to damage the threads




Now once you get it this far you will need to swing the locating tag & ring around to where the gap has been created from the camber bolt & the hole in the strut. Once you have found the gap & got the little tag in the strut hole it should look something like this, from here it just needs to be pushed in so it sits flat against the strut.


This sort of shows the original position of where the strut was sitting prior to the camber bolt being adjusted.


After a bit of a play around with the position of the tag & rotating the camber bolt you could watch the camber adjust, i found that they were at max adjustment when the tag was horizontal & point inwards, they ended up at the 9 o'clock position after this pic.


You can see the dirty marks from where the strut was sitting with the standard bolts.

Max Camber


Standard Camber


Once you're happy with the position of the camber bolt, hold the bolt end still with the 15mm & nip up the nut ensuring the camber bolt stays in the correct position, tighten the lower strut bolt back up with the 17mm spanners then tighten up the camber bolts to FT (Farken Tight)


It should sort of look like this...


Put the wheel back on & feed the acorn wheel nuts in evenly to ensure they centre the wheel on the taper, nip the wheel nuts up with the wheel brace.




Remove axle stand from chassis & lower off the jack carefully, once on the ground tighten up ALL wheel nuts.


Half the job is done, the other side is exactly the same, feed the camber bolt in from the front... (less likely it will rattle out if the nut does ever come off) set the tag & locator up at 3 o'clock this time (looking from the front)

Now off to the wheel aligners, now they can actually do something about the lack of camber, unlike previously it was only ever a "TOE & GO" wheel alignment where they only can adjust the toe in or toe out.

It will be interesting to see how many degrees of adjustment is given buy the bolts.

[stockman]

Good Tech!

[royce]

The way the tag is designed to work is face it inwards if you want to have more negative camber or out if you want more positive

Also pays to smother the thing with anti seize, otherwise they get stuck when you try and get em out

[BlueSuzy]

Looks good.

This actually applies to subaru's too. I need some for my outback. They come out stock with positive camber and my twisty 60-80km road is eating the tyres like nothing else.

Where'd you get them from and how much?

[atari4x4]

It was running around with positive camber for years, it was only just out & I've been able to get reasonable tyre wear by not pushing it to hard through hills. With them dialed all the way around it's got a massive amount of negative camber now... drift spec. dialing in the camber has in turn pushed the wheels to toe out.

I got these off Matty_Wall in the forsale section.

You can get camber bolts from Pedders, probably the only good thing they're good for.

royce wrote:

The way the tag is designed to work is face it inwards if you want to have more negative camber or out if you want more positive

Also pays to smother the thing with anti seize, otherwise they get stuck when you try and get em out

getting them to seize could be a good way to stop them moving...

has anyone ever had any trouble with them moving after being off road?

[royce]

you gotta really crank em up tight, every now and then I feel mine wiggle about

[atari4x4]

Drift Spec

[FullyZooked]

Drift spec! This is what happens if you go too far with the bolt!

[matty_wall]

BlueSuzy wrote:

Looks good.

This actually applies to subaru's too. I need some for my outback. They come out stock with positive camber and my twisty 60-80km road is eating the tyres like nothing else.

Where'd you get them from and how much?

I got them from Pedders.
I think they were $109.

[FullyZooked]

With my current setup, 2 inch lifted ironman springs and 30mm coil spacers I have the camber bolts at their most positive gives me "0" camber.

Atari's calmini control arms do go a fair way to fix camber for the lift provided but not quite enough.

[atari4x4]

i'll have to dig out some of my old wheel alignment sheets & see what it was. pretty sure it was positive 1 or 2 degrees, never really took much notice as it wasn't adjustable.

i am also running calmini's slightly shorter but heavier rate 2.5" GV front coils due to the extra weight of the J20a.

[Polar_Bear]

the atari number plate finally sees the light

ive had those exact camber bolts in my swb for years, they never moved

[stocker]

atari4x4 wrote:

Drift Spec

driftspec you need those tyres to be wrapped tighter to that rim... maybe try a 12" wide rim with them ... atm you look like the Anti-drift


Good tech btw

[got_bar_work]

U can adjust ur own camber after this on flat ground with a level or a string with a nut tied on the end. Ur only trying to get it close to vertical.
Hold the level on the rim lip or the string line againt the side of the tire and adjust to it's plumb or the string touches the bottom of the tire
Just remember to drive it back and forth a couple of meters in a straight line after u adjust them to check that they are still right .

[alexvitara]

got some numbers atari?
what did the wheel aligners end up setting it too?

[atari4x4]

NFI i didn't end up paying for it... my tyre dude did it for free, he left the camber bolts at max negatvie camber & dialed the toe adjustment.

[alexvitara]

so your running it a drift spec as in pics above?
should i get mine set to back to stock or dial abit extra in?

[atari4x4]

alexvitara wrote:

so your running it a drift spec as in pics above?
should i get mine set to back to stock or dial abit extra in?

bringing the toe in back to spec dailed a fair bit of camber out of the front end, i'll try to remember to get a pic tomorrow.

i'd leave it stock & let mr wheel aligner deal with it.

[jason_sgt]

I would love to know what the stats were. I'd be chasing -0.30­° with +0.50mm toe each side and am curious to see if this kit could or would do this. Given the time since this post how did the life of the tyres go? Worth the cash?

[atari4x4]

sorry about the late reply, had a short bus ride, down a long road.

i don't have the specs handy but it's due to go back on the machine for a check up.

i ended up pulling those tyres off after around 100,000 kms, they probably did another 15-20tho from that pic & they ended up on my camper trailer.

the camber bolts are only half the story, i'm also running OME struts that have a little bit of camber adjustment built in along with the full calmini kit.

[Jerryx4]

sorry to blow the cobwebs but FWARK lol
I drilled out hte bottom strut hole maybe 1/8 (kit recommends 1/4) but it didn't help..
Will these camber bolts fix this entirely?

[Gwagensteve]

yes..

[henno]

Yes indeed. I went from super positive to super negative camber. Will 100% sort out that issue and allow some wiggle room for your wheel alignment place of choice to sort it out perfectly.

[Jerryx4]

sxy, thanks guys. Have taken for a spin and very happy with results... will get bolts next pay then alignment and all good