fmstocco

Hi there! I was told that my car needs camber adjustment. Is this possible? Is there a way to adjust the camber of an A6 C5? How?? Thanks!

4Driver4

Front or rear?

fmstocco

Front (FWD). I was thinking about bending the wheel bearing housing a little. What about that?

fmstocco

BTW, it is -1.5 degree out on each side. 1 degree more than max tolerance. Is it all that important to be fixed, or I can live with?

fmstocco

I'm intrigued with why my car is out of camber adjustment (is it realy???). It never crashed. Then, I remembered one thing: the stock wheels are R15. But they where replaced by R17 wheels. Can this be responsible for that camber misalignment? Another thing to consider is that I did my control arms last week.

Anyway, I don't know if this assumption is right. After reading for a while, I found that some "luxury" cars realy have the camber a little out to make maneuvers easy. Is it righ for the Audi A6? I don't trust these shop guys... They say crap all the time when they get a complex car like Audi. That's why I'm the only one allowed to fix my car. The only thing I can't do myself is wheel alignment and those guys are complicating things!! I don't know what to believe. He said I have to stretch the subframe with a special machine to put it back in shape!!! What??? Strange..... Why would the subframe change its shape for no reason?? Age?

Thanks for any help.

4Driver4

Wheel size shouldn't matter to camber. Is the car at stock ride height? Generally, the best you can do with camber is to get it similar on both sides.

Not sure about your comment on luxury cars...are you sure you aren't thinking of caster?

monkeytronic

No offense but attempting ghetto suspension re-alignment is a recipe for fail.

Best case: the housing cracks. You now need to replace the housing before you can drive the car.

Worst case: the housing cracks while you're barreling down the interstate and someone gets hurt. Bad.

fmstocco

Thanks for the replies. The car is at stock height. And the camber is out at the same proportion on each side. The guy said it is 1.5 when the limit is 0.5 degrees. But both sides are identical. BTW, isn't this strange? I mean, normaly you get one out, but both? And at the same number???
May it have something to do with the control arms replacement I did?

It is realy camber. I saw it. He attached a laser gun to the wheel and moving it up and donw I could see the opening angle. He moved the gun all way down and marked 0. Then, moving all way up, it should follow a straight line (he said), but it ended at 1.5 degree.
I'm realy thinking about leaving it the way it is. How bad is this idea?

He said it is like this:

SloopJohnB@mac.com

One doesn't bend wheel bearing housings. OTOH, if the upright is aluminum, the steel bearing carrier can be shimmed to adjust caster.
If your tires are not wearing badly on the inner tread, why worry? Increased negative camber will help the front end bite on corners, reducing understeer.

SloopJohnB@mac.com

Why fix what ain't broken? Why did you take it in for alignment? Bad tire wear? If not, leave it alone.