Need more CAMBER

Phil.....I'm afraid grinding your own may be a hit or miss situation....They have 2* offset caber upper control arms available....See link:http://www.classicchevy.com/chevy-upper-control-arm-shafts-2-positive-camber-1955-1957.html

Thanks, but cant use em. I have CCP uppers.
Thought maybe I could machine off 1/8th of an inch here...



Anyone think this will hurt strucural integrity of the cntrl arm? It sits flush now with no shims on pass side and still has neg camber.
What I really need is a new frame!

Any body shop that does frame repairs can put your car on a frame rack and easily pull the front crossmember to gain more positive camber. They can do it without taking the car apart. The set up looks like this:

The problem of a lack of positive camber on these cars made the Chevrolet Service News in February 1956. In the article they suggested unbolting the lower control arm shafts, welding up the holes in the crossmember, and drilling new holes. While this method would work, it is cheaper and faster to simply spread the crossmember a small amount with hydraulic jacks.

thanks guys, Steve, nice pic/visual. Here is the results of alignment I did on Hunter equipment at work today.



I adjusted left front camber to neg side to compensate for rt side. Cross camer is in the green. However, you see actually that it is Caster that is out. I have seen posts here that say to add 1/4 more pos caster to pass side to compensate for road crown. I cant get any more out of pass side. As I said, control arm is but against tower. Toe is good, but you can see from specs that car will pull to the right, and it does, not real bad, but enough.

Steve, you posted add on the welding holes idea is good as well. You can see here that I had the common damage here, on right side only.



This is also why I had these braces made ( by prostreet ), and bolted them in, then welded to add some support as the lower cntrl arms want to push back as you drive.



So the idea of the frame pulling may work here. While the tires on the front are not super expensive and last a while (second set), and I could probably live with it, it drives me crazy

You have a problem with both camber and caster. Even if your camber was good at -0.5 degree, you'd still have negative caster.

Whether you could cut down the control arm shaft to get a bit more adjustment is hard to say. Obviously the shafts are thick enough across the bolt holes - what you'd have to watch is whether there would be a negative step or undercut at the stub shaft, or if this area would hit the frame if moved closer by the amount of the cut.

One thing I'm puzzled about is that these control arms don't have the usual 5 degrees of positive caster built in, like most aftermarket control arms do. Is this a feature you want or were expecting?

It's also questionable whether you could use the offset shafts that are on the market, as the shafts in your control arms are definitely not stock - so they may not exchange with stock or stock replacement shafts.

If you want to keep the control arms your best way out may be to get the crossmember bent back into correct dimensions.

Auggie said, "one say's it corrects camber, other one Mutton Hollow, say's caster. I don't see the caster changing."

Auggie, the offset shafts can correct both. Here's how: If the top of the tire leans inboard (negative camber), the offset shaft can help, as it will require adding shims to put the camber where it originally was. Then you can remove shims to get more positive camber.

Now let's say you have the camber you want and need to add more positive caster. The way you increase caster without changing camber is to remove a shim at the front control arm shaft bolt, and move that shim to the rear. If you run out of shims while setting caster, the offset shaft (or any other similar cure) will let you remove and add shims to increase caster.

Rick...
The CCP cntrl arms are supposed to have 5 deg caster, Thats what puzzles me as well.

You don't think I have cntl arms in backwards do you, ie swithed sides?
Boy would I feel stupid after riding around three years like this!
Here's a pic...

http://www.jegs.com/i/Specialty+Products/827/94350/10002/-1