vavagon rear camber?

Piper · Post by **Piper** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 3:27 pm

My 83 Westy rear wheels have a fairly serious tilt. The top of the wheel tilts in and the bottom out, about an inch at the tread of the tire. I've been told this is to improve handling, though I don't seem to see the same toeing on other vanagons. There seems to be no real abnormal tire wear, 10 000 kilometers into a fresh set of 6 ply Michelins, (though all 4 tires seem very slightly rounded, mostly I think because of old suspension). Any advice, opinions?

kdf · Post by **kdf** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 2:01 pm

We had the same problem with tire wear, but aligning the suspension made a big improvement. We had 1 deg of negative caster at the rear, and readjusting it to 0 degrees cured the problem. We also had some toe out at the front that was adjusted to a bit toe in. Realignment made it very stable and relaxing to drive, even at high speeds.

Bruce2 · Post by **Bruce2** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:09 pm

This is a problem that afflicts every Bay window Bus, and yours too. The grommets around your torsion bars at the spring plates are completely shot and need replacement. You can confirm this by looking at the torsion bar as it exits from the spring plate cover The tube supporting the torsion bar will be all the way up in the hole, usually rubbing against the torsion bar cover.

Getting an alignment while these bushings are shot is wasting your $$$.

melville · Post by **melville** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 5:22 am

Bruce2 wrote:This is a problem that afflicts every Bay window Bus, and yours too. The grommets around your torsion bars at the spring plates are completely shot and need replacement. You can confirm this by looking at the torsion bar as it exits from the spring plate cover The tube supporting the torsion bar will be all the way up in the hole, usually rubbing against the torsion bar cover.

Getting an alignment while these bushings are shot is wasting your $$$.

The bushings probably need to be checked but no torsion bars on his Wedgie. A worthy alignment shop will check for play in the various joints before they mess with any settings. After all, why work for $50 (alignment only) when you can work for $500 (alignment + repair)?

Bruce2 · Post by **Bruce2** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:59 pm

melville wrote: .... but no torsion bars on his Wedgie.

Right. I forgot they got coil springs.
Either way, cars don't just drift out of alignment due to age. Something usually has to be worn out, or the car was hit.

Piper · Post by **Piper** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:10 pm

the bus has definitely been hit in its time, but this isn't a new thing, just something someone pointed out, as "weird", I never gave it much thought honestly, always been like that, I assumed it was normal. So I may have trouble?

Bruce2 · Post by **Bruce2** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:46 pm

Is it cambered with a lot of load in the camper?

A couple of days ago I saw a late model Honda minivan that was overloaded. It had some serious negative camber on the rear wheels.

Is your rear suspension sitting lower than when it was new?

Piper · Post by **Piper** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 4:29 pm

its camber doesn't change much loaded or not. the suspension actually sit about proper hight, friends with Vanagons say my van looks "big" because it sits at a tall height. When I do the "shock test" (Push down, and see if the van "bounce" or just comes back up) its doesn't bounce, so I think the shocks are reasonable. As I said, the camber isn't a new thing, its always been like that, passed safety like that, and I've put 10 000+ kms on her since. I'll get her looked at before I put her away for the winter I guess.