Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing tire wear patern, camber and toe-out

Thanks, got it booked now at the local brit car enthousiast garage. (and MG racer). He has several methods of measuring. Should have some conformed data next week. Cheers J

Good luck. I'll try an take some photos anyway.

Interesting topic this as I was thinking of having my toe in and camber checked. PJB recommended zero degrees for both camber and toe in. I have noticed that my steering is slightly heavier than a narrow bodied Plus 4 that I have driven but that may be mainly due to the wider tyres on the standard Plus 4.

PS. I have the camber adjustment but is it possible to fit the camber adjustment plates to a pre-camber adjustment car?

I believe the top of the kingpin is different on the adjustable camber front end.

I can't see the point of the adjustable ones for road use. A Morgan's suspension and chassis design is extremely limited and the ideal camber degree settings are well known.

For racing, that's another matter but even on slicks (real slicks, not road legal rubber) I'm unsure that anyone would go beyond 1.25 degrees as it's rear wheel lift caused by unequal roll centres that is the main limitation. Non adjustable camber plates are quite easy to change and the benefit of adjustable, unless one is overcoming a bent chassis, does not overcome the need to re-adjust the toe-in.

Peter, having chatted at length with Peter Mulberry I set up my plus 8 with .75 neg degrees of camber and 1/16" of tie in, you need to bear in mind that as it was an 96 car also had 4 degrees of castor only, whereas yours should be 6 degrees. I found that with my set up the turn in was great, positive, and negligible tyre wear. I would say 0.5 neg camber and 1/16" toe should be about right. The other aspect to bear in mind is the angle of the steering rod arms, any angulation away from parallel to the ground will alter the steering geometry one wheel to the other when turning, in other words altering the toe in, imho this is the main cause for shimmy, I had my steering rack re-aligned putting the steering bars virtually parallel to each other and any slight shimmy I had before was gone, this was done by New Elms.

Actually there is good reason, the Morgan chassis is not precision engineered and a standard chassis can have quite some variation in the brazing in of the lugs, hence the camber angle. Making the camber adjustable allows a simple and quick bit of spannering to get the correct figures on both sides.

It is tempting to suggest the OPs car has had an accident at some point as the figures are so far from book. The toe out will make the car nervous and lighten the steering. The high degree of negative camber will make the steering heavy (among other things). Put these together and it suggests the tracking was set deliberately out to try and make up for the camber.

When referring to toe-in as a distance (ie. 1/8") ,
This is the distance between the front an back of the rims or the tires?
cheers J

So is the top lug of the crosshead, it has a dome recessed to match the dome of the kingpins. I have a photo somewhere on my laptop if you want it?

This is the domed end of the Kingpin.



And here is the squared off end for the non adjustable camber plate earlier set up.