As you guys know, my suspension has been redone entirely from the ground-up and I'm using Wayne's shock mounts, which are in excellent conditions. I did, however, install Adamesh's 1 inch lower springs. Of course, this results in excessive camber, which I wish to correct, especially now that I have a new set of Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 tires miles with only 15 miles on them.

I used the information from this thread and my alignment readings after lowering the car to calculate the half-shaft shims I need to bring the rear to spec.

• For the left side: I needed 3.5 mm on top of the OE 4 mm shim or a single 7.5 mm shim. I bought the 7.5 mm shim to bring that side to spec.
• The right side requires [size=13px]4.5 on top of factory 4 for a total of 8.5. I bought the 4.5 mm shim and will stack the 4 mm and the 4.5 mm shim. I plan on doing this this weekend.[/size]

[size=13px]Here are the alignment charts from when I lowered the car: [/size]


Overview of alignment


Front end alignment


Rear end alignment

Now the question is, how do I bring the front end close to or to spec without changing to the OE springs? As I understand, the front end camber kit for this car is just an eccentric bolt that may, at most only provide 0.5º. That would be just enough to bring the left side to borderline within spec, but the right side would still be 0.4º out of spec. And that's being optimistic because it's possible that it may provide less correction. Does anyone know if being 0.4º out of spec on the front right would cause excessive tire wear? Has anyone used the eccentric bolt to correct camber for these cars? Is this the only way to correct front camber on a XKR that has been purposely lowered?

 

giandanielxk8,
Your spacer choices for the rear look OK to me. If you are running on 20inch 10J wheels then just be aware of the reduced tyre-to-arch clearance when bottoming out..

Reference your front camber, the eccentric bolts are your best plausible option.

There is potential to change your upper Wishbone spacer positions because the pivot axis is mounted at an angle relative to the lower wishbone (see red lines in pic). However, you need to make a large adjustment to your Camber and this will adversely affect your Caster angles which are currently in spec (so it is not recommended that you do this).

I did once see a pic of someone who had used adjustable upper wishbones to solve this problem but I cannot find any reference to it in this forum? They would look something like this, are expensive and no proof they would work (so don't recommended you do this either).

 

Thank you! I'm running the 9J 18 inch Hydra wheels. I think I should be ok clearance-wise. Thank you for confirming my rear spacer choices. I will procure the eccentric bolts and re-do the alignments. I will add that when I was doing the suspension, the front end already had an eccentric bolt on the lower wishbones. I forgot to tell this to the tech, and I believe he did not adjust it. Are the standard lower wishbone bolts already eccentric bolts? Do the camber kit eccentric bolts provide more adjustment?

Is it possible that I don't need new eccentric bolts and just have to have them properly adjusted?

 

My understanding is that the 4.2 cars came with the eccentric bolts. Not sure about the 4.0 cars....

 

My 2003 has concentric bolts as standard for the front lower wishbones (all 4 bolts). I have no idea what other owners have.

You are lucky to already have eccentric bolts fitted and, if you have 4 of them, then I doubt you need purchase any more. These bolts will be a slightly different design to the rears and have a limit to how much eccentricity they can have before they become too weak. I would expect them to be a maximum of 3mm offset centers for a 12mm shaft.

I would be interested in seeing a pic of one bolt if you get the chance and also a pic of how their Head interfaces with the subframe.
My subframe has all round holes for the lower wishbone mountings but I think some of yours must be slightly slotted to support the function of eccentric bolts.

 

My 2000 XKR has the eccentric bolts on the rear lower wishbones. The holes are round, and eccentric bolts can be fitted to all XK8/R. One hole is bigger than the other to give space for the eccentric part, and therefor the bolts can only be fitted from the rear with the nut at the front. Eccentric bolt has a line on the head corresponding to the eccentric part.

 

I don't think so, at least from my experience. My 2005 XKR came with 20" BBS wheels and one of the times I got an alignment after getting new tires the guy couldn't get the front into proper alignment. He had to order some camber bolt kit that was about $125 for the two bolts and nuts. I assume these were the eccentric bolts.

 

Jon89,
I found this paragraph in the 2003MY JTIS.

 

^^ Typical Jaguar randomness. I guess the only way to know for sure is to take a good look at all four wheel positions....

 

So I got lucky with the eccentric fulcrum bolt. I will be fitting those rear spacers and informing him of the eccentric bolts for the front. Hopefully that gets me close to spec.

 

I installed the rear end shims and took the car for an alignment. The rear end came out perfect! The front (I forgot to take a picture of the graph), is off by 0.2° on the left and °0.4 on the right for camber, but the centerline camber, caster, and toe are in spec. This was achieved by adjusting the eccentric bolts on the lower control arm. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough.



Rear end alignment after the shims

 

Thank you for the information and I just installed the Adamesh springs this past weekend. What prompted me to do this was one day I had to use the Jag to get some bags of mulch which lowered the car by about an inch. Of course, it didn't drive well but sure looked good with the butt sitting lower. Show us a picture when you get a chance.

 

I had a follow up question to this. I recently replaced the rear springs and need to correct the camber on mine as well. On this and other threads the common topic is buying shims and then having the car aligned. Would alignment shops have these shims or is some special Jaguar specific shim needed? I ask because I need a front end alignment as well and would rather just have them align both ends without me having to order anything. Edit : I found another thread and now it makes sense what I need to do as these shims are specific and not just general alignment shims. Gianddaniel, where did you get the shims from? And what are the torque specs for the halfshafts?

Thank you very much,

Rob

 

The 'shims' are called spacers and sourced from Jaguar. Part numbers below:

 

Thank you very much, and I was able to order a couple of them.