Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hey guys,

Need someone to do me a quick favour. I've noticed that one of my front wheels is off centre relative to the wheel arch (wheen looking directly at the rim). I did some measurments, middle of back wheel to middle of front wheel and got a 10mm discrepency. Found it to be the alignment of the K-Frame (well it's called that on a commodore - has your sway bar and front stabilizer bar connected to it). Fixing it is not a drama at all but I need some measurements from you guys. Can you please measure the distance between the middle of your back rim to the middle of your front rim and post it or PM me please so I know if I need to adjust one side or both. The car still drives and handles fine but now that I've noticed it, I see it very easily and plus it puts excess strain on the sway bar bush o that side.

Thanks heaps in advance Dezz and Randy :turned:

Cheers

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/109935-attn-series-2-owners/
Share on other sites

Your not referring to the offset castor on the driverside wheel to allow for australias tapered roads. If thats it...then thats normal if a suspension place has changed the castor bushes or done some sort of alignment on your car...maybe a previous owner? Stops the car from pulling to your left normally.

Thats how i interpreted it. Or have i completely missed what youve said?

I've done a very quick and crude photoshop ob to show what I'm talking about using a pic of my car before it got its wheels. Although this is the same side in both pics, imagine that the 'normal' side, the first photo is the passenger side and the second photo represents the driver side. As I mentioned, the entire K-Frame requires an adjustment. I just need measurements from rim centre to rim centre from a straight series II.

Disregard the height difference, that's just me and 1:20am and St Patricks Day =D

Passenger Side

post-23873-1142605197.jpg

Driver Side

post-23873-1142605225.jpg

make sure the person who you get this measurement off doesn't have aftermarket castor rods or bushes!......

just exactly what i was going to say...i've got about 20mm from the front gaurd to my tyre with my castor rods (8deg castor)

dan id be getting under the front to c which arm or rod is bent

this was the same with mine n yet im still to replace it. it will still drive fine due to it being aligned with it being in that position

mine is the radius rod thats bent. $80 from jappo donks to replace

Hey man was wondering when you'd poke your head in =D I've checked all the rods and bars, had it up on stands and the wheel off. The K-Frame needs to come forward 10mm, everything else looks and measures right. I just need some reliable measurements.

Hey guys,

Need someone to do me a quick favour. I've noticed that one of my front wheels is off centre relative to the wheel arch (wheen looking directly at the rim). I did some measurments, middle of back wheel to middle of front wheel and got a 10mm discrepency. Found it to be the alignment of the K-Frame (well it's called that on a commodore - has your sway bar and front stabilizer bar connected to it). Fixing it is not a drama at all but I need some measurements from you guys. Can you please measure the distance between the middle of your back rim to the middle of your front rim and post it or PM me please so I know if I need to adjust one side or both. The car still drives and handles fine but now that I've noticed it, I see it very easily and plus it puts excess strain on the sway bar bush o that side.

Thanks heaps in advance Dezz and Randy :banana:

Cheers

What's the caster readings?

:P cheers :P

SK: nfi, tell me how to measure them and I'll tell you what they are. As I stated in my blurb, the k-frame appears mis-aligned and that a simple adjustment there will put everything back to where it should be. Unless adjusting castor is going to move the k-krame as well which I can't see how that would occur (but I'm no expert). I can see from the pressure on the sway bar bush that the k-frame needs to come forward and everything would be then be where it should be.

Cheers

SK: nfi, tell me how to measure them and I'll tell you what they are. As I stated in my blurb, the k-frame appears mis-aligned and that a simple adjustment there will put everything back to where it should be. Unless adjusting castor is going to move the k-krame as well which I can't see how that would occur (but I'm no expert). I can see from the pressure on the sway bar bush that the k-frame needs to come forward and everything would be then be where it should be.

Cheers

Caster is best measured on a wheel aligner, as it is a differential measurement. Simply put, the amount of camber when the wheel is turned one way compared to the amount of camber when the wheel is turned the other way (20 degrees is the standard). If you move one side of the front subframe forward you will increase the caster on that side. This will give uneven caster when compared to the other side, the car will pull to one side as a result (the side with the least caster).

Currently you have said the car tracks OK, so that must mean the caster is somewhere near similar, side to side. Move one side of the subframe and that won't be the case. Also moving the front subframe will change the toe settings, moving towards toe out.

My suggestion would be to get the wheel alignment checked before you touch anything, all 4 wheels, camber, caster and toe.

:happy: cheers :P

Edited by Sydneykid

Great, thanks =D

I got 2720mm on the right side and 2710mm on the left so I'll go with 2720 being correct.

SydneyKid: is adjusting castor on the left going to affect this measurement? I might go get all the measurements for an alignment done but have them call me first.

Great, thanks =D

I got 2720mm on the right side and 2710mm on the left so I'll go with 2720 being correct.

SydneyKid: is adjusting castor on the left going to affect this measurement? I might go get all the measurements for an alignment done but have them call me first.

The LHS being short is quite common, it's the side that hits the gutters and the edge of the road surface the most. If you adjust the caster using offset bushes in the radius rods, or by shortening the radius rods, then you will change the wheelbase.

As I posted previously check the caster before you do anything.

:) cheers :(

  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry I didn't see this earlier, Dan!

I can measure up for you if you still want confirmation, but I found today that my castor bushes are completely stuffed, and will need replacing.

I'm going to head up a new post asking for the part numbers, cause searching doesn't give me any joy.

It's all good, I took some detailed measurements and have since fixed the issue. The measurements did NOT add up so the only way to fix the issue was to die grind new holes for the stabilizer bar, which required us to weld on new metal washer and tidy it all up. I've attached a pic showing the end result (just took the pic, the repair a few days old now). I know this sounds very dodgy BUT I had a suspension/alignment specialist on hand to assist and he agreed that this was the best fix without putting the car on a rack and risking bending other components.

For the record the measurements are now PERFECT each side at 2730mm wheel centre to wheel centre. I'll be getting a full balance and alignment after easter as we're putting in my shocks and springs (Bilstiens with King Super Low's for that phat look :))

Just to clarify, we die grinded the original holes back towards the front of the car then welded new metal washers in place (we also sprayed the welds with WD-40 which makes them high tensile apparently). We then touched it up with some primer and a quick hit of black.

post-23873-1144571826.jpg

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • I know why it happened and I’m embarrassed to say but I was testing the polarity of one of the led bulb to see which side was positive with a 12v battery and that’s when it decided to fry hoping I didn’t damage anything else
    • I came here to note that is a zener diode too base on the info there. Based on that, I'd also be suspicious that replacing it, and it's likely to do the same. A lot of use cases will see it used as either voltage protection, or to create a cheap but relatively stable fixed voltage supply. That would mean it has seen more voltage than it should, and has gone into voltage melt down. If there is something else in the circuit dumping out higher than it should voltages, that needs to be found too. It's quite likely they're trying to use the Zener to limit the voltage that is hitting through to the transistor beside it, so what ever goes to the zener is likely a signal, and they're using the transistor in that circuit to amplify it. Especially as it seems they've also got a capacitor across the zener. Looks like there is meant to be something "noisy" to that zener, and what ever it was, had a melt down. Looking at that picture, it also looks like there's some solder joints that really need redoing, and it might be worth having the whole board properly inspected.  Unfortunately, without being able to stick a multimeter on it, and start tracing it all out, I'm pretty much at a loss now to help. I don't even believe I have a climate control board from an R33 around here to pull apart and see if any of the circuit appears similar to give some ideas.
    • Nah - but you won't find anything on dismantling the seats in any such thing anyway.
    • Could be. Could also be that they sit around broken more. To be fair, you almost never see one driving around. I see more R chassis GTRs than the Renault ones.
    • Yeah. Nah. This is why I said My bold for my double emphasis. We're not talking about cars tuned to the edge of det here. We're talking about normal cars. Flame propagation speed and the amount of energy required to ignite the fuel are not significant factors when running at 1500-4000 rpm, and medium to light loads, like nearly every car on the road (except twin cab utes which are driven at 6k and 100% load all the time). There is no shortage of ignition energy available in any petrol engine. If there was, we'd all be in deep shit. The calorific value, on a volume basis, is significantly different, between 98 and 91, and that turns up immediately in consumption numbers. You can see the signal easily if you control for the other variables well enough, and/or collect enough stats. As to not seeing any benefit - we had a couple of EF and EL Falcons in the company fleet back in the late 90s and early 2000s. The EEC IV ECU in those things was particularly good at adding in timing as soon as knock headroom improved, which typically came from putting in some 95 or 98. The responsiveness and power improved noticeably, and the fuel consumption dropped considerably, just from going to 95. Less delta from there to 98 - almost not noticeable, compared to the big differences seen between 91 and 95. Way back in the day, when supermarkets first started selling fuel from their own stations, I did thousands of km in FNQ in a small Toyota. I can't remember if it was a Starlet or an early Yaris. Anyway - the supermarket servos were bringing in cheap fuel from Indonesia, and the other servos were still using locally refined gear. The fuel consumption was typically at least 5%, often as much as 8% worse on the Indo shit, presumably because they had a lot more oxygenated component in the brew, and were probably barely meeting the octane spec. Around the same time or maybe a bit later (like 25 years ago), I could tell the difference between Shell 98 and BP 98, and typically preferred to only use Shell then because the Skyline ran so much better on it. Years later I found the realtionship between them had swapped, as a consequence of yet more refinery closures. So I've only used BP 98 since. Although, I must say that I could not fault the odd tank of United 98 that I've run. It's probably the same stuff. It is also very important to remember that these findings are often dependent on region. With most of the refineries in Oz now dead, there's less variability in local stuff, and he majority of our fuels are not even refined here any more anyway. It probably depends more on which SE Asian refinery is currently cheapest to operate.
×
×
  • Create New...