It's pretty much the standard design for all brands in RC, they just work. It wouldn't take the Chinese much to fabricate and add laser levels etc. It would have to be aluminium and as mentioned, the toe must be measured at ground level. Chuck a set of scales in each and have corner weighting as well. Simple solution, that's why I thought it might give people an idea of how to do it themselves.
Indeed.. I'm not convinced using the car's wheel is the best way to measure, I've seen to many false reading from RC cars with binding suspension, poor shock geometry etc etc. I'd rather have a flat plane attached to the hub than a wheel that could have hit a kerb and might be slightly out of true, tyre walls move around and can warp.. there's no guarantee. What's needed is a hub side plate that suspends the car at the correct ride height so you can load and unload springs while you make changes and let the plate move on the ground to settle true, we do it on a shiny flat surface. It helps for the side plate to slip on a smooth surface where tyres will grip and resist and skew. Never understood how driving a car onto ramps with the wrong geometry works. When we setup, we tap the chassis to load and unload the suspension so the side plates slide and at rest give a true camber reading. If I had the skills or the need, I'd build a similar rig and shoot laser pointers out front mounted to the side plate to extend toe vectors out as far as I could. Then a little trig to work it out and it's down to seconds of a degree. Camber and castor is relatively easy to measure, a simple string line for camber and caster would give you a true reference. There'd be a lot of loading and unloading of the suspension before I would call it right. All said and done, a RC mate of mine does it on ramps at his Bridgestone tyre centre and he gets it perfect on the laser setup at his shop. I think my car got a little more love than usual though.
As I say I agree with you this is the money no object setup (apart from the strings of course) hub stands with integral rollers at the base on top of slip plates on top of scales. I'm working at the other end of the scale though. I have seen a suggestion to rotate the wheels 90 and re-measure, but I have to be happy with the camber first. The tracking is allegedly on 0.5mm of toe out at the minute -007' which will do until I correct camber. With a short run on new tyres the edges look ok and even.
I made myself this tool for camber adjustment. it is laser cut from 12mm steel with 50mm cast wheels. the plan was to fit a threaded bar between the hole on top of "the thing" and suspension strut, then loosen the bolts, adjust camber using the threaded bar, then tighten the bolts finaly. but it does not work, maybe I could try to fit the threaded bar between "the thing" and car body ?? what do you think ? other than that, it works well, no need to remove/refit wheel, no need to roll the car back and forth..
That's quite smart. I usually just put a wedge shaped piece of metal into the gap between hub and strut to add positive, or tap it away to get negative, is the threaded adjuster necessary?
I normally put a car jack under the ball joint, then lower it to ride height and poke a suitably shaped lever between shock and bearing carrier and heave about till required camber is achieved you've made a nice bit of kit though, your idea with threaded rod should work if not to strut then it will to car body. its basically how VW do it:
I'm finished for now, but I will try some brace between body and plate next time. I have to say, MK1 golf camber adjustment with eccentric head bolts is far better..
