Reply to "Rear Wheels Leaning In?"

Michael & all,

Recipe for George's handy home camber gage:

You need a length of 1/4", 3/8" or 1/2" steel square stock, cut to length so that it fits from bead to bead on your wheels without hitting the sidewall of the tires or the extreme rolled edge of the wheels (a little over 19" in Michael's case). Now acquire a large calibrated angle/protractor bubble level with a magnetic base. The good ones are calibrated to +/- 0.5 degrees. The larger the scale, the easier to read differences in angle.

Hold the steel stock vertically from bead to bead across your wheel & attach the level, you can get a fairly accurate reading of camber. Much more accurate than your eye, and more convenient than driving to the alignment shop every time you want to monitor your camber setting.

There are also decent home / track side alignment tools sold by several companines in the $600 to $1K range.

This problem is why there are adjustable camber bars & adjustable upper rear control arms sold for the Pantera. The additional force applied to the chassis by wider tires accelerates the problem, and the wider spacing of the rear tires on the GT4 / GT5 / GT5-S increases the force even more. It doesn't take much "flex" or "give" in the chassis to throw the camber off & the wider the tire OR stiffer the sidewall, the more sensitive the setting is.

I am a new Pantera owner, but I'd bet a round of drinks that the chassis flexing at the upper rear control arm could be reduced if the mounting of the camber bar were spread out, attached at 3 points on both sides rather than just one.

your "1/2 a bubble off plumb" friend on the PIBB, George