Camber bushes and steering shaft

[chrisg]

I knew I'd get some flack when I tried to describe what revolving the steering wheel with a bolloxed steering shaft feels like........ Very tight then releases as you move past the uj section that's out of alignment. []

Anyhow, back to the question raised about settings.....

Much depends on how:

1. Your shockers/ ARB set up
2 Tyres you're running
3. Amount of driving track vs road you do

My experience of both the S2 and the Turbo is that anything more than 2.25degrees negative camber at the front makes it very pointy and tramlining -it also wears the inside tyre edge big time ! Even though it helps on track days.

So, as a compromise you could try ~ 1.5 -itve at the front with the same at the back using 0 toe-in. Having fitted the 968 Castor mounts you can get quite a bit of castor - go for as much as you can on each side provided it's matched across the axle (front)

IIRC, depending on the shockers you're running on the S2, there's only so much -itve camber you can get without getting out a rat tail file ?

 

[awattam]

Chris, thanks for the advice. The car rarely gets driven hard, and certainly never on a track. At the moment the suspension is all standard and I'm on standard wheels with nearly new Contisport contact 2 tyres all round. How close are those recommendations to the factory ones? The current setup had worn the previous set of tyres perfectly even so I'd like to achieve the same with these really. As far as I know it hasn't been set up in a few years but it didn't do many miles with the previous owner.

Extra castor should give stronger self-centreing to the steering, this should make the steering 'weight up' more when turning but how does this affect the steering feel in a straight line?

 

[awattam]

Thought I'd update this as I fitted my castor bushes and steering shaft today.

All went well apart from one seized nut on the RHS castor bush, thanks to all (chirsg especially) who offered advice. I've only had a quick drive to test it but the steering seems much more crisp. There was quite noticeable play in the bottom joint of the shaft once I got it off. I'll have to wait until the alignment has been done next sat to really tell though.

A couple of things I noticed -

The new steering shaft was orientated 180 degrees from the original, meaning that the steering wheel needs re-alignining once you're done. Luckily I compared the two before fitting so I expected this and didn't panic that I'd done it wrong!

I also bought steering rack mount bushes to fit but as soon as I got underneath it was clear that the rack on my car (1990 S2) is solid mounted to the cross member. As a result I have a pair of bushes going spare, PM me if you're interested [] (and check that they're actually fitted to your car first!)