Black C3 Vette

I just finished rebuilding the rear suspension of my 80. I replaced the trailing arm bushings, ujoints and strut rods, and used all new hardware to put it back together.

My problem is, no matter how tight I tighten the nut on the camber bolts for the strut rod, the bolt rotates on its own when I drive it. After a few hard turns the camber works its way to about 7 degrees. The back end gets really loose and its hard to drive at that point. Is there a trick to getting the camber bolts to stay where I need them?

I have the cam washers on each side, and I have the washers between the strut rod and the mount it sits in. The nut gets extremely tight, but the bolt still turns.

mds3013

Do you have lock washers on the nut side? This is from the '77 AIM. I hope it helps. mike...

billcarson

hard to believe but mine were installed with the gripper pins out for smooth adjusting.just a thought.

Black C3 Vette

Yeah, there is a lock nut on them. The nut isn't loosening, it just doesn't seem to be holding the strut rod tight enough and it keeps shifting on me.

Gripper pins? Both of the adjustment washers on mine are smooth on both sides, should one of them have teeth to help hold it in place? The bushing spacer/washers were smooth as well.

billcarson

mine do and were installed backwards.

Black C3 Vette

Thanks for the picture mds, thats exactly how I have mine assembled. The nut isn't coming loose on mine, I've even used a 2 foot long wrench to tighten it, but even after that, when I put a wrench on the bolt head, I can spin it with barely any effort.

mds3013

That is definately not what should happen. Hopefully one of the guys will know. This is the place to find out. mike...

Black C3 Vette

I found this thread, its a similar problem, he never posted what fixed it, but it sounds like its the cap washers that go around the bushings. I have them installed in mine, however I reused the old ones, maybe thats part of my problem.

edit: heres the thread http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c3-t...f-its-own.html

billcarson

if you look real close and zoom in to the right washer you can make out a pin toward the bottom.they go all around.i think they cut the resolution a bit though.

Black C3 Vette

I just had a thought when I installed the bolts, they were a little too long and they hit the leaf spring. I trimmed about 1/4" off of the end, but now I am wondering if the bolt was too long, maybe I ran out of threads for the nut. I might be bottoming out the nut on the threads, but the bolt isn't actually getting that tight. I ordered the rebuild kit for an 80 - 82, but notice there are different bolts called out, maybe they sent me the wrong ones.

Black C3 Vette

So I took everything apart and it turns out the nuts were bottoming out on the threads. However, I added some thick washers to fix that issue, but its still not holding the camber setting. I set both sides at -1, took it for a spin and when I got home it was close to -6 on both sides. I tried setting it numerous times, made sure to torque the bolts with the vehicle weight on them, but no luck.

What else would affect the camber?

kaiserbud

Courtesy of Dan @ Van Steel....

Ensure the inboard Strut Rods have reducing washers. Here is a link to my site showing the reducing washers. It's hard to tell but they are a top hat style washer. What it does is it reduces the size of the strut rods inner sleeve ID so it won't flop around on the camber bolt.

Black C3 Vette

Yup, the reducing washers are there, I reused the old ones, but everything else is new.

After messing with it last night, I noticed that if I drive in reverse, then check the camber, its exactly where I set it at. But once I drive forward, it changes 4 or 5 degrees. This is really confusing me, its the wife's car and I want to get it fixed so she quits bugging me about it.

zwede

I had the same problem, but only on one side. I never cared for the design of the strut rods so I went with this instead:



They're from Vette Brakes and use heim joints instead of bushings. There is no increase in noise or vibration.

melhard

I overhauled the strut rods on my 76 and still can't get the camber to set correct. Can;t get the rear wheels from tilting in. Will bad trailing arms bushing causing this?

zwede

If you can't get the strut rods "short enough", it is probably caused by worn diff yokes (the shafts coming out the sides of the diff pumpkin).

mrvette

Strut rods have to be perfectly straight, toooooo many guys either jack up the car via those rods, OR purposely bend them to take up for bushing wear......

and yes work diffy yokes will greatly affect the alignment, you can wear about 1/4"+ off the yokes, inside the diffy where you can't see them, and so have issues with taking that slop up on the bottom/stock rod adjustments.....

gkull

Over the years I have heard of this problem and I could never figure out why something would come loose when my Smart struts have been rock solid for 20 years of use.

But our phony IRS system the half shafts have tremendous weight that it transmits to the yokes that ride on the pin through the posi unit.

The end of the yokes ware away on stock yokes, the posi cross pin wares, the posi case can fail, depending on the posi design like in the Eaton cone type the cone wares away and allows the yokes to move in and out. Any of these things will make camber impossible to set.

So if your yokes can move a noticeable amout in and out of the rear end that problem has to be fixed before you can ever try to set a camber number. Which by the way should be way less than one degree with the suspension settled. mine is only neg. .52 degrees with a 1/16 toe in