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On 10 Oct 2002, at 20:34, Everett Barnes wrote: > I'm now convinced that the camber and toe-in are just plain wayyyyy off. > The wheel spins fine in the air (unloaded) but is very restricted while > under load. The alignment was always a bit off since I bought the > Squareback and today I looked underneath to check things out. The lower > ball joints adjustment things were not pointing forward so I straightened > them out just to see if that would do anything. Nope. In fact, I think > it's worse now. After I turned them straight, I got to thinking, how do you > know how much in or out the bottoms should be adjusted? Did I even turn them > the right way? Or does it even matter, they just need to be straight ahead? It doesn't matter. All straight aheads are the same. The ball joints are on an eccentric axis and one full turn just brings them back to the exact same spot. > Should the alignment shop only be adjusting the upper ball joints or can > they adjust both upper and lower ball joints as long as the bottom is left > pointing straight? They should set the lowers to straight ahead and adjust the uppers to get the right camber. Camber is the wheel angle from vertical as seen from the front of the car. (Caster is the angle of the steering axis as seen from the side. On our cars this is not independently adjustable.) Things to look out for: If your car slid sideways into a curb (a curb strike) you may well have bent the lower torsion arm. If this is the case you won't be able to get the alignment right until you replace that arm. I had a 71 like this and I knew it was bent, but I was VERY surprised at how much like a banana the inner part looked like when I finally got it off. VW changed the size of the inner wheel bearing in mid 68. The late bearing will fit the early cars, but it won't support the wheel properly and you will never get the bearing to adjust correctly. If you have the wrong bearing in there this will cause a problem. With drum brakes, this might let the drum wobble enough to rub on the brake shoes even if the shoes are fully retracted. What was changed at that time was the diameter of the spindle under the inner bearing. I believe the old one is 2mm smaller, so a late one on your car would be loose by 2mm. This is easy to check if you just take the bearing out and try it on the spindle by itself. - Jim Adney jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711-3054 USA ------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <type3-off@vwtype3.org> For more help, see http://vwtype3.org/list/