Rear shim kit

[prs]

I will be removing much of the rear suspension after xmas to give everything a check over etc. I have a 1.6SS so have a rear adjustable roll bar and wide track front suspension. If I fit a rear shim kit which costs £30 to the ears will I notice much difference for road use?

Thanks in advance to your replies

Phil

 

Edited by - prs on 20 Dec 2002 15:34:11

[Lawrence_Z]

No

 

 

has anyone seen these shims?

 

I'm curious as to their shape(s)

 

Lawrence

[Chelspeed]

This is the freestyle kit presumably? I'm very doubtful about this. When I measured mine, at one of the UK's best known motorsport orientated alignment places, the two sides were half a degree different on camber and a bit less on toe from each other. We made a shim up to fit between the de dion ear and the tube to adjust toe on one side to bring it close to zero toe in, then a shim to fit between the hub carrier and the ear to equalise camber to 1 deg neg on each side. This was trial and error, making a shim, fitting it, measuring again, making a thinner shim etc etc.

 

The standard tolerance didn't surprise me too much, production tolerances in assembling the de dion tube etc etc. But if they're all like this then how can you buy an off the shelf kit to adjust the tracking and camber to some required value?

 

Perhaps the newer tubes (mine was a 96 design, bought in 98, I think) are better as standard.

[stevefoster]

Shimming with washers or similar has seen some or a failure(s) of the ear as the loads are centred not spread.

Curb one on the road or over high curbs on track and this could happen.

I assumed the Freestyle kit to be plates that supported the entire surface of the ear in some way to avoid this problem.

 

I have a camber and toe guage ex-AA pro kit so can do this properly.

 

 

/Steve

 

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[Lennie]

I have to put my hands up the shim kits do not exist as a production item yet. Gary and I have always paid a lot of attention to the rear of the car and have found that all cars are different from side to side and hence wrong in one way or another. Gary makes angled shims that adjust camber and toe in at fixed amounts to allow safe easy adjustment, they replace the thin alli between the tube and ear. It is not very good engineering practice to put bits of feeler gauge as most race teams do, and is not a time consuming trial and error job. They also mean you can allow for slightly bent tubes instead of replacing the whole thing. Unfortunately we have been unable to productionise the shims enough to make the project worthwhile. It has taught us a lesson though, when we had the brochure produced, because of the long lead time, we thought they would be up and running by the festival but it is not the case. We can only apologise but the project is on going and we have told, all the customers who have enquired about them, that we will get back to them.

[Chelspeed]

Good answer!

 

This sort of honesty is all too rare. I for one am impressed. I already run adjustable front and rear bars from Juno (Freestyle's previous incarnation) and await results of the new pushrod front shocks with interest, I won't hold my breath for the shims though.