Tuesday, June 3, 2014

From zero to demon

About a year ago I was in search of some camber plates for Yellow Lion.  To find a bolt on set is pretty rare and not too many aftermarket sources are available, even china doesn't make some.  Fortunately, Ground Control up in northern california still has some support for this old rotary beast.


Original on right.
After coughing up alot of money for these items, I threw them in the back for about a year.  Since I never made any time to install them.


Though I do wish I had unboxed them right when I got them.  The build quality on these bits are amazing.  Even the J stuff doesn't compare in my opinion.

The camber plates come with a top hat for coilover springs.  Keep in mind when you do order from them, be very specific on the suspension setup you're planning to do.  It will probably come with a different piece if you use a OEM type of spring.  They even asked for the type of shock I intended to use, since they have different sleeves for each particular shock.  Now that's detail.

The top hat has a machine bearing that will sit and rotate on the camber plate.  Pretty much other camber systems put weight on the pillow ball bearing putting stress on the single point.  The ground control was spreads the weight along the plate surface.

One thing the plate didn't used was press ins studs, I didn't like it much.  Instead they use nuts and bolt for installation on to the chassis.  Reason for this, was they slotted the camber plate for extra caster adjustment.  Nice touch, but it makes a bit more difficult to install.

 While on the subject of suspension, I decided to tear apart the strut.

 It required a special tool to remove the gland nut, which I didn't carry in my vast arsenal.  As you can see it's a very unique looking nut. 

My first attempt for the removal tool, ended up being no bueno.

 The second attempt proved to be more successful.  Had to make sure the welds didn't touch the threads and limited the amount amount of weld beads since I needed to reuse the nut.

I'm satisfied how it turned out.  Wish they made camber plates for the AE86, I would definitely pick a set up after my experience with these.  Now I can have adjustment less than zero.  Demon camber anyone?





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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

GC doesn't make camber plates for the ae86 anymore? That'd be unfortunate if that is the case... They had some trick top hats that adjusted camber and caster as well. Local buddy up here in norcal has a pair of them.