Camber/Brace adjustment

Hey Bob, normally an adjustable brace has a center tie rod that you would turn to loosen or tighten the brace. When you turn it into one direction, the brace on each side of the tie rod will move in toward each other to loosen or it will move away from each other to tighten. You might also have a nut on each side, before making the adjustments (if you do make them, to tighten up the frame for example), you will need to loosen the nuts first before attempting to turn the tie rod, what the nut does is it keeps the tie rod in it's position and not let it loosen by itself or by vibration, the nut locks the tie rod position in place.

How much to turn and tighten the tie rod after it becomes increasingly harder to turn is for someone else to tell you, since I don't know how tight it's suppose to be, i would suppose it's just common sense and not tightening it to the point where it will over stress the frame and deform the shape of it.

Larry

Bob
The distance between the centre of the shock absorber mounting bolts should be 27,87 inches.
+- 0,10 inches.
Roughly, the distance between the vertical side of the chassis right under the "camber bar" is
21,55". But they are not paralell.

Then you can see whatewer the body has "taken a seat" or not.

You may also lift the car and check the distance.
Sometimes it is perfect to zero the bar when lifted.

G�ran Malmberg

The whole spot-welded body has 'relaxed' back there, allowing the a-arm attach points to move inward at the top, giving negative camber. Sometimes, spot-welds are sheared or were never made. If you add an adjustable brace and simply crank out to restore stock settings, you risk warping the quarter panels, cracking paint and generally screwing things up. To do this 'properly', jack up the rear so both rear tires are off the ground, then add the adjustable brace and crank a "little" preload in. Lower the car down (don't drop it!) and roll it around or drive it a bit. Then repeat the next day after everything sorta settles in with the new brace settings. In this way, you can ease the thing back close to the stock settings (with no shims in the lower arm mounts). But don't expect to wind up with a like-new car- the metal that moves back there, moves quite a bit in 32 years....To my knowlege, Wilkinson is the only Pantera vendor thats taken the trouble to build a replica frame-alignment jig to check, tweek and adjust this sag back to stock. But it ain't cheap nor eassy to fix it this way.

Right now the car does have an adjustable bar in it. Actually when I loosened the locknuts there didnt really feel like much pressure was on there. (and right now no-doubt I'm seeing a neg camber in the rear, more on the drivers side).

On the lower A's there are (2) shims on the left and none on the right. Im thinking I may wanna remove those first to bring the bottom in, then play with the upper brace. (BTW. I did a drop string measure from top of upper shock mount-2-mount, and get about 28 1/8").........

Bob

If you have some negative camber, dont be alarmed, this may also come from the A-arm bushings. The rubber compress on the pressure side and the steel tube for the attaching bolt is no longer in the centre of the A-arm eye.
Goran Malmberg

Goran.........another good point there. Its probably not the best of worlds trying to take an accurate measurement with some warn pars, like the bushings and such.


Bob

Right, the measurment must be taken at the bolt hole centre in the chassis. But if you can adjust rear camber to zero, I dont think you have any chassie problem. Change the upper A-arm busching, lift the car and zero out the camber bar, make an rear alignment and youre Ok.

Then,(if whats allready said is true)the chassi should happen to have a very slight "off" in measurment it is of no concerne as long as it does not comes from rust colapps.
G�ran Malmberg