I took a photo of everything else but the balljoint. However, I put all the caster shims to the front side of the balljoint, to move it rearward as much as possible. However, if you look at the photo of my camber shims, notice how I have a different number on each side? The manual says you must have the same number under the left and right bolts. I ignored that and added more under the rear bolt, which has the effect of rotating the upper control arm clockwise if we look down on it from the top (for the right side of the suspension) That moves the balljoint rearward by moving the control arm, and increases the caster.

I did the alignment myself, I used the Longacre Racing camber/caster gauge. I also did it on my 4 post hoist, which I made sure was perfectly level when I installed it. I ended up with 1/16" toe in and about 4 degrees caster. I think I set it to 1 degree camber, I can't remember camber.

The car drives quite nicely now, I had very serious tramlining before just by swapping caster shims on the balljoint - that couldn't produce enough caster to prevent tramlining.

 

Understood. Much appreciated. Yes about 1 deg negative camber would be about my aim. I'm used to 3 deg negative from running race teams for our oilco & toe out.

I will probably do the rear anti roll bar first. I'm just waiting for a friend to finish his so that I can drive it, because it isn't cheap. There are also some very nice mods available now to stop the IRS from walking about on it's V mounts.

My only worry with your solution is that the wishbones are not really working in unison. But it might not matter in reality.

 

The racers used Jagboi's method. I don't see a problem with it.

Modern cars tend to have less king pin offset and need more caster as a consequence. Our cars may be fine with much less than 10 Deg.

 

Racers do lots of things that are inappropriate for road cars but I too see little wrong with Jagboi's method. He's not butchering anything.

The reality for my car is that I'm not going to do anything that spoils originality. This fortunately doesn't & can be returned to standard with ease should one wish to. Same goes for rear anti roll bar. The radius arms have the mounting points stock and the body has the mounting points with plastic plugs in them. Probably omitted for cost reasons.

 

I've an idea that I've not tried physically or on paper so it might well be a load of ****. It's to use series XJ/XJS uprights. I think the king pin inclination is more vertical. It would probably require turning the top wishbone upside down (good anyway) and leaving out most of the camber spacers. It would gain an odd degree or so of caster, increase the steering axis offset and improve the camber change with turning of the outside wheel. And there would be a 'free' brake upgrade thrown in. The obvious downside is that with few or no camber spacers there's less scope for Jagboi's method.

 

That would be interesting to explore. I would like to reduce body roll on my car but it looks worse watching the car externally than it feels as the driver.

 

My car was basically undrivable with the standard alignment settings. At 80 km/h I was fighting to stay in my lane, and it was a generous sized lane - an 18 wheeler semi truck would have had no trouble in that lane width. The car was so affected by the roads surface it was darting all over the road,

I moved all the shims to the front to create as much caster as I could at first, and that helped but wasn't enough. Then a friend of mine who is into old US cars suggested rotating the control arm with shims, as that is how alignment was done on older GM cars. I had extra shims and then I was able to create enough caster to make the car stable and reasonably easy to drive. Prior to that I could do a 10 km drive and be exhausted, I was fighting the car so much.

Like you Glen, I didn't want to hack up the car, but adding shims is an easily reversible thing. I doubt it affects the control arms, as they are still free to move, they are just ever so slightly closer together now.

 

My Mk2 has been off the road in storage for 30 years so my memory and standards of acceptability may be a touch out of date, but I don't recall having a problem with mine for keeping in lane. I used to drive it fast in all sorts of conditions across the UK and mainland Europe. I ran it on Avon Turbospeed radial tyres. It always ran straight and true - even when one front tyre had a major puncture. I'd say it's biggest problem was that it was too straight and true - it wasn't responsive to turning the steering wheel, a lot of turns to apply some lock and still the car wanted to go straight on. It was a case of be brave and give it some gas, but not too much and be wary in case the front wheels do gain a bit of cornering power....

 

Yes my car runs straight & true hands off the wheel even on the old General tyres it's been standing on (new but over 20 years old). When I fit my Michelins I know it will be even better from experience. The S Type was the one compact that you could coax into some minor oversteer. The others were terminal understeerers.