Problems with new Ridetech suspension with 3 degrees of positive camber

[Old66Tiger]

I posted in pro-touring but I thought I would post here as well to see if others have had similar issues. My new Ridetech suspension is in and I have 3 degrees of positive camber without any shims. To get back to zero, I will need to put in about 3/4" of shims. The upper arms have about the same dimensions as the stock arms as far as distance from cross shaft to the ball joint stud. The spindle appears to have 3/4" of additional distance from the brake mounting boss to the ball joint stud hole. Anyone else have this or similar problems?

[Vince@Meanstreets]

Yes, is your engine in and at operating weight? How low is your car sitting?

[Old66Tiger]

Yup, I was driving the car down the road before I pulled the front end apart and swapped the SpeedTech stuff over for the Ridetech stuff. The Speedtech with factory spindles needed 3/16" shims to get -0.5 degrees of camber at the same ride height. I made up 5/8" of shims out of oak (just to see where the camber would end up and I am still in the positive area. Car is not dragging weeds. About 2" lower than factory at best.

Apparently, these arms just went through a complete re-design. I also now need to grind my inner fenders to allow clearance for these arms.

[Blake Foster]

Yup, I was driving the car down the road before I pulled the front end apart and swapped the SpeedTech stuff over for the Ridetech stuff. The Speedtech with factory spindles needed 3/16" shims to get -0.5 degrees of camber at the same ride height. I made up 5/8" of shims out of oak (just to see where the camber would end up and I am still in the positive area. Car is not dragging weeds. About 2" lower than factory at best.

Apparently, these arms just went through a complete re-design. I also now need to grind my inner fenders to allow clearance for these arms.

Now why would you go and do that???

[coolwelder62]

Did you get the right part# of a-arms.Give Darren @ridetech acall.I'm sure someone there can figure out what needs to happen to fix the problem.

[Old66Tiger]

Not sure. I looked at their website and it appears that the pictures listed are for an older design like what was used on the 66 GTO for V8TV. I saw in another post that they were going to setup their test chevelle with the newer design so it will be interesting to see if they ran into the same problem as I did.

[GregWeld]

Now why would you go and do that???





HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA good question!!!

[clill]

Have you called Ride Tech ?

[Old66Tiger]

Holiday weekend...always my luck. I have a show this coming Saturday that I paid for in advance so I am hoping to get this ironed out before then.

[Old66Tiger]

I stand corrected on one of my prior posts. The Ridetech spindles are measuring only 0.100" greater than the factory spindles from the upper mounting boss to the ball joint hole. The arms measure almost 1/2" longer from the cross shaft to the center of the ball joint than the Speedtech arms. Add these two together and there is the difference.

[64pontiac]

Sucks to have long weekend problems, I hear you there! Hopefully it is something simple like old part number etc that they can correct for you. I will say, that Bret was extremely good getting an issue I had sorted out last week. I guess squeaky wheel gets it, but they had no issue helping me once I got the attention of the right person.

We are all curious though, why did you yank the Speedtech arms????

[Ron Sutton]

Would it make sense to go back to the Speedtech arms ... or wait until you talk to Ridetech Tuesday ?

[Rick D]

I stand corrected on one of my prior posts. The Ridetech spindles are measuring only 0.100" greater than the factory spindles from the upper mounting boss to the ball joint hole. The arms measure almost 1/2" longer from the cross shaft to the center of the ball joint than the Speedtech arms. Add these two together and there is the difference.

Just wondering, but don't the new arms come with the offset shaft? When you take your measurements are the shafts facing the correct direction? I thought they had like 3/4 inch built into the offset??

Just thinking out loud I'm sure Bret and the gang at RideTech will get it sorted out for you! :flag2:

[Old66Tiger]

I went away from the Speedtech because the ride was very harsh. I didn't want to go with a traditional coil spring because I like the idea of being able to dial in the ride height with the adjuster. When I talked with QA1 a few years back, they advised that the ride would be harsh and that was about as good as it gets. I learned yesterday that they now have made some improvements to the latest shocks to make the ride more compliant. Too late now! The Speedtech stuff is well made and I have no complaints on the quality of their product. The QA1's were the biggest issue for me. I loved them when I put them in, but the ride is just too darn rough and it got a bit old for me over the last year. Maybe i am getting old or something.

The car is on the lift and I will give the guys a call first thing tomorrow. Every time I have talked with Britt and Danny, the have been great to deal with. Hope this is an easy fix. There is a guy on Pro-touring that has the same problem with his Camaro. He is at 1/2" of shims and still has more to go to get it close to zero. These arms have a 1/8" off-set built into the shafts and then the shafts have an adjustable slug that will allow caster movement front to back. I can flip the shafts around to get an additional offset, but that gets me to zero or maybe a few tenths negative. 5/8" of offset corrected 3 degrees of camber so we are talking 0.6 degrees for every 1/8" shim

[mild2wild]

I went away from the Speedtech because the ride was very harsh. I didn't want to go with a traditional coil spring because I like the idea of being able to dial in the ride height with the adjuster. When I talked with QA1 a few years back, they advised that the ride would be harsh and that was about as good as it gets. I learned yesterday that they now have made some improvements to the latest shocks to make the ride more compliant. Too late now! The Speedtech stuff is well made and I have no complaints on the quality of their product. The QA1's were the biggest issue for me. I loved them when I put them in, but the ride is just too darn rough and it got a bit old for me over the last year. Maybe i am getting old or something.

The car is on the lift and I will give the guys a call first thing tomorrow. Every time I have talked with Britt and Danny, the have been great to deal with. Hope this is an easy fix. There is a guy on Pro-touring that has the same problem with his Camaro. He is at 1/2" of shims and still has more to go to get it close to zero. These arms have a 1/8" off-set built into the shafts and then the shafts have an adjustable slug that will allow caster movement front to back. I can flip the shafts around to get an additional offset, but that gets me to zero or maybe a few tenths negative. 5/8" of offset corrected 3 degrees of camber so we are talking 0.6 degrees for every 1/8" shim

You could have upgraded to Ridetech coilovers with your SpeedTech arms.

[bret]

From my investigation this morning with Britt and Kyle, it sounds like they've made a couple suggestions that will get you in the right direction.

We've run into these sorts of problems periodically. It's basically a stacking of tolerances, or even an unusual combination of errors. Here is what I THINK might be leading to your problem:

* Ride height - We use a taller spindle than the OEM unit to increase the negative camber gain upon suspension compression. Conversely, it will also create positive camber gain on extension. This means that the higher the ride height that you select for your car, the more positive camber you will see [and need to compensate for by shimming the cross shaft inboard]. We run into this sometimes with air suspension because the customer can easily manipulate the ride height. Usually not a problem, but IF it is combined with a couple of other possible issues...

* Cross shaft orientation - I think you've now addressed this, but our cross shaft has about .125" of centerline offset built into it. This allows a total of 1/4" of camber adjustment just by rotating the shaft 180 degrees. Easy to miss.

* Caster - I understand you are concerned about camber right now, but realize that the upper control arm mounts are not parallel to the centerline of the car. They are angled in at the rear. By using the caster slugs to move the upper arms back to get more positive caster you will also coincidentally add a small amount of negative camber. Not much, but every little bit helps.

* In theory, one should be able to make a set of control arms that would require the bare minimum of shims to set camber. Unfortunately, fabricated tolerances in the 1960's were expressed in much larger terms than they are today. It was not unusual to see the upper control arm mounts being off by 1/4". That's why even the GM factory used shims for final alignment. Today's standards are so tight that many cars don't even have any provision for setting frontend alignment. Good for them, not so great for those of us who want to try an alternative alignment setting :(

* In addition to the wider tolerances of 45 years ago, we've seen a great deal of "wear" on these GM frontends, usually expressed by the front crossmember being damaged or just sagging over time, to the point where you get too much negative camber. I understand that is not your particular problem, but it helps explain some of the variables we have to accommodate when designing control arms. While a positive camber issue problem can likely be resolved with shims, too much negative camber caused by a damaged or worn crossmember cannot.


Hopefully you've got your particular problem resolved by now, this is just some more info for those reviewing the thread.

[Blake Foster]

I went away from the Speedtech because the ride was very harsh. I didn't want to go with a traditional coil spring because I like the idea of being able to dial in the ride height with the adjuster. When I talked with QA1 a few years back, they advised that the ride would be harsh and that was about as good as it gets. I learned yesterday that they now have made some improvements to the latest shocks to make the ride more compliant. Too late now! The Speedtech stuff is well made and I have no complaints on the quality of their product. The QA1's were the biggest issue for me. I loved them when I put them in, but the ride is just too darn rough and it got a bit old for me over the last year. Maybe i am getting old or something.

I just wanted to Expand on this. Not burning the OP
The control arms will not make the ride HARSH,( you may experience more road noise and feel) The QA1 shocks in the past year or so have re valved their shocks to soften them up. The Ridetech have MORE adjustment than the QA1 for sure and better valving to start with.
With our Chicane coil over conversion you can easily convert from the QA1 coil over conversion to the Ridetech, Viking, or any other shock that uses a 1.25 wide x 1/2" upper bearing and T bar lower mount.
Just so you know.

[Old66Tiger]

Bret, Thanks for the response. I understand that things need to be made somewhat neutral and in the past the extremes were dealt with at the frame shop...to cure the sagging a-body frame problems. My car apparently does not have that problem. I worked on it a bit tonight and I think I have a good neutral alignment - enough to make it to the alignment shop without chewing up my tires.

Here are a couple of observations from the end user point of view.

1. I understand that the upper arm geometry re-design was to allow easier fabrication of the parts by allowing the tubing to be welded at a right angle to the bushing shell. This is good from the manufacturing side, but bad from the user side. The openings in the wheel wells of the GTO's are pretty narrow and requires some cutting to get them to fit. A triangulated design allows installation that is easy to achieve without tons of modifications. This is especially key after the car has been painted.

2. I like the off-set slugs for the cross shaft, but to be truly effective, these need to be included in the kit to allow them to be used at the time of alignment. My alignment guy gets a minimum of $100 every time the car rolls onto the alignment rack. Without these in hand, it can get kind of pricy and time consuming waiting to get a set of the slugs mailed to you.

3. A set of shims included with the kit would be nice. They cost about $0.030 each but are a bear to come by in small towns or places where the parts stores just can't get them. In my case, i need them to make it out of the garage and down the road to the shop. Without them, the tires hit the lip and I can't go anywhere. I got lucky, I found a source, but it took 8 calls to get them.

4. The offset cross shaft is a great idea and even more offset would be better. In the case of the Ridetech cross shaft, there is only 1/8" of additional camber that is achieved by rotating the shaft.

there might be others, but that is the start. Everyone in your organization was very pleasant to deal with and got back to me very quickly. Britt even e-mailed me late on Friday night with an answer to a question I had.

[bret]

Bret, Thanks for the response. I understand that things need to be made somewhat neutral and in the past the extremes were dealt with at the frame shop...to cure the sagging a-body frame problems. My car apparently does not have that problem. I worked on it a bit tonight and I think I have a good neutral alignment - enough to make it to the alignment shop without chewing up my tires.

Here are a couple of observations from the end user point of view.

1. I understand that the upper arm geometry re-design was to allow easier fabrication of the parts by allowing the tubing to be welded at a right angle to the bushing shell. This is good from the manufacturing side, but bad from the user side. The openings in the wheel wells of the GTO's are pretty narrow and requires some cutting to get them to fit. A triangulated design allows installation that is easy to achieve without tons of modifications. This is especially key after the car has been painted.

2. I like the off-set slugs for the cross shaft, but to be truly effective, these need to be included in the kit to allow them to be used at the time of alignment. My alignment guy gets a minimum of $100 every time the car rolls onto the alignment rack. Without these in hand, it can get kind of pricy and time consuming waiting to get a set of the slugs mailed to you.

3. A set of shims included with the kit would be nice. They cost about $0.030 each but are a bear to come by in small towns or places where the parts stores just can't get them. In my case, i need them to make it out of the garage and down the road to the shop. Without them, the tires hit the lip and I can't go anywhere. I got lucky, I found a source, but it took 8 calls to get them.

4. The offset cross shaft is a great idea and even more offset would be better. In the case of the Ridetech cross shaft, there is only 1/8" of additional camber that is achieved by rotating the shaft.

there might be others, but that is the start. Everyone in your organization was very pleasant to deal with and got back to me very quickly. Britt even e-mailed me late on Friday night with an answer to a question I had.

All very good points.

1. I think you're referring to the inner fenderwell opening. Yes it's close, especially when big caster numbers are used. It came down to a choice between fit and function. The particular panel fitment from car to car is also a contributing factor.
2. Agreed. The current problem is cost of manufacture and availability. We are working to get the cost down so we can just throw the entire range in each package.
3. Agreed, but most people take their car to an alignment shop where they have them by the 5 gallon bucket. Washers will do nicely in a pinch.
4. Agreed, but the amount of offset is somewhat restricted by the diameter and cross section of the cross shaft. Gotta leave some material there for strength.

[GrabberGT]

All very good points.

1. I think you're referring to the inner fenderwell opening. Yes it's close, especially when big caster numbers are used. It came down to a choice between fit and function. The particular panel fitment from car to car is also a contributing factor.
2. Agreed. The current problem is cost of manufacture and availability. We are working to get the cost down so we can just throw the entire range in each package.
3. Agreed, but most people take their car to an alignment shop where they have them by the 5 gallon bucket. Washers will do nicely in a pinch.
4. Agreed, but the amount of offset is somewhat restricted by the diameter and cross section of the cross shaft. Gotta leave some material there for strength.

I dont actually own any Ridetech parts or even a GM for that matter so Im not sure why I keep reading this thread. Ridetech doesn't even make parts specific to my vehicle but perhaps, somewhere in my sub-conscience, I know there is going to be great support and advice from what has to be the most supportive company known to our hobby. Thanks Bret and team. I learn something new every time you post.

[Vortech404]

I'm glad Bret is helping you through this.

Still would have been a good idea to give Blake a call first since you already
had his a arms on your car. A simple shock and spring change would have made all the difference.

good luck
John