Pilgrim Camber and Caster angles

[peterol1]

Hi Folks,
Can you advise me on the best all round camber and caster set up for my Sierra based sumo Mk3. It has 17inch wheels and a Chevy 5.7 lump (if that makes a difference).
Any info on best settings for front and back would be very welcomed.
Merry Christmas,
Pete

[Sidecarbod]

Originally Posted by peterol1

Hi Folks,
Can you advise me on the best all round camber and caster set up for my Sierra based sumo Mk3. It has 17inch wheels and a Chevy 5.7 lump (if that makes a difference).
Any info on best settings for front and back would be very welcomed.
Merry Christmas,
Pete

Pete,

You need to imagine a fifty gallon oil drum full of worms, you have just opened it!

There are many posts on this subject, if nobody else posts links up to them I'll have a look and see what I can dig up.


Regards,

Pete


P.S. Don't believe anything that "Chedz" tells you! All he's good for is losing bits of his car by leaving them on varrious shop counters around Camberley!!!

[chedz]

Hi Pete,

as a start I strongly suggest you have a scan through the Pilgrim section of the forum, there have been quite a number of lenghy posts on these subjects to date that will give you some steer on what to think about at least.

For the rear there's not a lot you can do, there is no easy way to adjust anything at the back. The default setting is what most people seem to stick with, but you've probably noticed if you've measured it, or looked at the car from behind its seems to have a lot of camber and toe out. I think the toe out was something like 10mm/m (sidecarbod will correct me if that was wrong). So you can either live with it, or depending on your time available, budget or enthusiasm, try to correct this. I won't go into details but the solutions range from slotting holes and welding them up, slotting holes and fitting tagged washers or something else that gareth does but I don't know the details of that.

For the front, it can be fixed and adjusted. You can change the castor by removing bits of the chassis and packing with washers to move the top wishbones back and forth. You can change the camber by winding in and out the top ball joint. The best settings for this are somewhat hard to explain, it seems that the optimum setting will be what is needed to allow the car to self centre enough to get it through SVA. The car must self centre from full lock with nearly no input from the steering wheel. To achieve this I and others have had to increase caster by moving the top wishbone back, reduce camber to almost zero when on the road (not at full droop) and reduce lock by packing out the steering rack. Can't be sure you'll need all this as other people seem to have different experiences. It could depend on components, do you have standard wish bones, do you have have short (20 ish mm) or long (50ish mm) mushrooms.

welcome to the world so sumo setup.

Cheers

Graham

[chedz]

If only I could type faster.....!

[Sidecarbod]

Originally Posted by chedz

If only I could type faster.....!

Redeem yourself by finding all the links and posting them!!!

[Noel]

AND...........how come Chedz has a nice little trophy by his name and we don't??

[Miket]

Originally Posted by Noel

AND...........how come Chedz has a nice little trophy by his name and we don't??

Click on it and find out

[Noel]

I did do that, just wondered why he has to be different

[Sidecarbod]

Originally Posted by Noel

AND...........how come Chedz has a nice little trophy by his name and we don't??

It's because he is top of the pile at "haemorrhoids" !!

[Sidecarbod]

Enough of this foolishness!


Below is a load of posts to keep you up all night! (I'm sure that there's a load more but these are the ones I know about, or had a hand in)


Basically you should at least do the following:-

1. Cut the rack mounts down to 102mm
2. Cut the top wishbone mount on the chassis so that you can move the wishbones back
3. Fit the tall mushrooms
4. Set the full droop to zero degrees camber then wind out each ball joint another two turns. (Use a plumb line attached to a straight edge)
5. Fit the rear trailing arms so that the outer bolts are on the lowest hole.

The sierra setup seems to be the one that has the most problems with regards so self centering but it does not seem to effect all cars.

The rear tow out mod can be done by varrious means, Gareth machines the hubs. In my opinion the bumpsteer mod was the best mod that I've done to my car.

The front tow has a big effect on the self centering and is not that easy to setup. I would be a bit careful about some proffesional setup firms, as they may just try to use the rears to setup the fronts, this isn't much good if the rears stick out like clowns feet! The camber also has a big effect.

Please be aware that I'm not saying that my way is the only way to fix the Sumo issues, but the mods that I've done do work and can be done without loads of expensive tools. (Apart from the lazers!)


Not resolved yet:-

sumo steering



One where I sort out my rear tow out issue:-

SUMO MK3 Trailing arms modification



Some gumph on wishbones:-

sumo mk 3 steering



More gumph:-

Sumo Wishbone setup




A short post on bumpsteer:-

Bump steer




My attempt at explaining how I measured the bumpsteer and set the tracking up with a diagram!!! :-

Sumo 3 light front end



Regards,

Pete