Camber adjustment on front wheels

[FluoFerret]

I recently swapped my original control arms for tubular one made by BMR Suspension. I kept exactly to the letter what they said about swapping the parts. Their instructions were clear on the alignment shims on the upper control arms: mark them and install them 1 to 1 on the new control arms.
BUT!
Now I have a positive wheel camber on both sides, but the alignment seems to be okay, since I re-installed the original shim-setup as advised by BMR. Do I risk to screw up if I just add on each bolt about 4mm thick self made steelplate-shims? I will try to get pictures of it later on, as soon as I am done swapping the tie-rods.
Any help here is MOST appreciated

 

[fleming442]

Are they backwards?

 

[Clarmo]

I've aligned thousands of cars at my shop.
Bring it to a garage and have them do it for you. There isn't too much you can do at home.

 

[LS6 Tommy]

Did you maybe get the upper A-arm cross shafts in backwards? I did that once...

Tommy

 

[FluoFerret]

Are they backwards?

I don't think so, I compared the upper control arms with the original arms and made sure they were on the right side of the car.

I've aligned thousands of cars at my shop.
Bring it to a garage and have them do it for you. There isn't too much you can do at home.

I thought about buying this tool here and do it myself. What do you think of it?
https://static.summitracing.com/global/images/instructions/tnh-3300_at.pdf

Did you maybe get the upper A-arm cross shafts in backwards? I did that once...
Tommy

hmm, I will have to check, but I trust the guys at BMR that they installed/aligned them correctly in the bushings of each control arm

 

[FluoFerret]

Here's the passenger side. First picture shows the spirit level when set on the rim across the hub, the second picture shows the distance of the spirit level to the rim when the bubble is in full neutral


And here we have the driver side



It seems like its the exact same angle on both sides.

 

[fleming442]

Cross shafts could be flipped 180, too, if they're offset...
I did my alignment with a Fastrax, 2 jackstands, a piece of string, and a tape measure. Drives nice with even tire wear.
Specialty Products Company 91000 FasTrax Camber/Caster Gauge for Wheels from 13" to 18" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PG6OW2/?tag=gbody-20

 

[pontiacgp]

The stock set up with OEM parts has a positive setting on the camber. Have you driven the car or bounced the front end since the upgrade?

 

[melloelky]

There's diffrent geometry built into these arms that wasn't in the desgin of the ones you took off.they told you to keep track of what shim pack went where so you could drive it to the alignmnet shop without destroying the tires.442's rite if the cross shaft is flipped that's something that can change things as they're desgined to be a coarse adjustment-say if the car was previously hit and flipping the shaft to offset the camber to spec.those upper arms are a revised cross shaft ie- geometry and are shorter overall.which would require LESS of a shim stack to achieve negative camber.an alignment is money well spent.if you can't justify spending the money on that service why replace the arms with better pieces in the first place.

 

[FluoFerret]

Cross shafts could be flipped 180, too, if they're offset...
I did my alignment with a Fastrax, 2 jackstands, a piece of string, and a tape measure. Drives nice with even tire wear.
Specialty Products Company 91000 FasTrax Camber/Caster Gauge for Wheels from 13" to 18" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PG6OW2/?tag=gbody-20

The tool looks good, I will get myself this one too I followed your advice and checked the cross shafts again. They are symetric, so it doesn't matter what way they are oriented. That's already a good thing

The stock set up with OEM parts has a positive setting on the camber. Have you driven the car or bounced the front end since the upgrade?

Thanks for the hint with the stock OEM camber. I remembered that I have the factory-documentation from "Pontiac Historical Services" for my car, and indeed, the car had a positive camber. I posted the picture of this detail below this. If my pictures from above are any indication, I would guess there is way too much, as only + o,5 is required. The car hasn't been out on the street yet. Still too much salt and snow here... Bounced, well sort of... Still looked like an enormous +camber...

an alignment is money well spent.if you can't justify spending the money on that service why replace the arms with better pieces in the first place.

I replaced the parts, because the old control arms were terribly rotten and devoured by rust. The bushings were bad too. Something the technical control board should have seen at the last inspections, but that's a whole other story. On the other hand, the upgrade came cheaper than buying stock parts. Please bear in mind that I am from outside the US, so parts will get severely slammed by import-taxes. Especially if they are OEM. It got even worse since the Donald Trump is in office, as this is retaliation for his exagerated taxation of many european products. I would immediately, without any hesitation, spend my Euros on a good alignment, but the main problem is this: US-Car on the european continent. Workshops in general won't touch them, not to mention old american cars, for which the reasons are among others wrong tools (not metric), no experience, not much literature, no access to professional us-parts-suppliers, etc.