Lifted cart alignment

[derelicte]

The camber, toe and steering wheel angle on my cart were way out of whack from the factory. The camber was so far off, the front tires looked like a parallelogram. One had excessive positive camber and the other had excessive negative camber. This caused premature wear on the outside of one of the front tires.

I had fixed the the steering wheel angle and toe about a year ago, but now that I'm getting ready to replace the tires, I felt I needed the address the camber issue. Lifted carts don't have factory camber adjustments, so I had to buy something called camber bolts. These are special bolts with lobes that allow you to tweak the camber angle. Here are the bolts I bought:



https://a.co/d/28jeTal

There are lots of these available. The key is you need M12 sized bolts. Some of them are a little longer than these ones. I'd get a set of two. They are made for full sized cars, so they are more than up to the task for our carts.

The way they work is you replace one of the strut bolts with a camber bolt. When you turn the bolt head, the cam lob pushes the spindle out or in. Due to the wonkiness of my cart, I had to install one in the upper strut bolt hole and the other in the lower strut bolt hole.

It took some experimenting to find the best fitment. The special tabbed washer allows you to choose either more positive or negative adjustment. However the raised rib along the edge of the strut bracket prevents the tab on the washer from facing the wheel, which was why I installed the bolt in the lower hole on one side. This switched the adjustment around. The bottom line is you will have to play with them.

I used a digital angle finder stuck to a steel angle iron cut to fit exactly so it rested against the lip of the wheel. I was hoping for 0 degrees of camber with the unloaded cart on the ground, but that wasn't possible on my cart. I settled with less than 0.2 degrees of negative camber. The side to side difference between the two is almost 0, which is what really matters.

Now that the camber is set, you can adjust the toe. I used the procedure shown in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnV57_ZGBwE

In the video, he suggests 1/8" of toe in which is quite a lot with our small tires. I actually set it to just under 1/16", which is still slightly on the high side. This web site will allow you convert toe difference to angle based on wheel size:

https://robrobinette.com/ConvertToeInchesToDegrees.htm

Getting the steering wheel straight and the toe set correctly also involves a lot of trial and error. I'd make a small adjustment and go for a quick ride. Then repeat until it was dialed in.

With the proper alignment, it does steer a little easier now. I think a big part of this was reducing the toe from 1/8". I will chalk the tires to verify that they are sitting even, but digital angle gauge should be very accurate. Just by eyeballing it, you can see the tires are pretty much straight up and down now. Time will tell.

This was pretty easy to do with basic tools and taking your time. Good luck if you decide to do it.

[Itchy75]

Thanks for the write up.

I just ordered 2 sets for my cart. The front passenger side seems to have a decent amount of positive camber that I’d like to adjust. The driver side doesn’t seem so bad, but I’ll do the adjustment on that side as well.

[derelicte]

I noticed that I wasn't super clear in my write up. The bolts I linked to include two per package. But you can find singles from other manufacturers. Hopefully you can return the extra set.

But if the camber is really off you could use two sets. I could probably use two on my driver's side to get 0 degrees. One bolt only gets you +/- 1.75 degrees and mine was a little more than that. Some bolt only get you +/- 1.5 degrees.

Sorry about the confusion!

[MCTX281]

How did you adjust the steering wheel angle? Loosen the bolt on the rack and center the steering wheel?

[derelicte]

No. I lengthened the tie rod on one side and shortened it on the other.

Maybe not the best way but it was the easiest way I could do it. But the tie rods are more or less equal length now.