Herald 13/60 rear wheel camber when reversing

[goodwoodweirdo]

hello chaps,

 

I'm new to the forum and my 13/60, recently bought as a resto project which is now up and running. I remember from my spitty days the rear end sags in when jacking the car up and was very alarmed when I backed up the Herald and the rear camber is alarming, Could this be down to a worn or broken part ?

 

Many thanks

Matt

[Pete Lewis]

not generally my guess is  you will have some excessive rear wheel  toe out so when reversing the wheels try to converge  and  spread when fowards  

have a look at pics on twiddle day  and 

 

 

[NonMember]

Depending how bad it is, either remove a shim each side or leave it alone. A little bit of toe-out at the back does no harm.

[Pete Lewis]

this is a economical and easy to use as we showed at twiddle day  soon earns its keep if you dont like timber and tapes 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gunson-G4008-Trakrite-Wheel-Alignment/dp/B0012M9KEC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529332411&sr=8-1&keywords=trakrite+wheel+alignment+gauge

 

i would get the rear end sorted ,  note Herald specification is to have 150lbs on each seat   ( rent a crowd or bags of sand) to aim at 0-1/16" toe in for front and rear

get it right and no more bunny  side hops on pot holes  etc.

remember that toe in is dragging the tyre sideways , which devours tyres costs fuel and reduces performance

 

[Colin Lindsay]

Interesting topic, this - I'm watching with interest as my GT6 has a very alarming tendency to spread the rear wheels widely at the bottom if reversed; so much so that the rear mud flaps trail on the ground. Going forwards, no bother at all, but on reverse the wheels go right in at the top and out at the bottom, and other members have commented on it. 

[NonMember]

1 hour ago, Colin Lindsay said:

Interesting topic, this - I'm watching with interest as my GT6 has a very alarming tendency to spread the rear wheels widely at the bottom if reversed; so much so that the rear mud flaps trail on the ground. Going forwards, no bother at all, but on reverse the wheels go right in at the top and out at the bottom, and other members have commented on it. 

That's normally a sign of excessive toe-in, and you may want to add a shim each side.

As Pete said, the book figure is a tiny bit of toe-in, which is odd for the driven wheels. Normally you'd want driven wheels to be slightly out from ideal, because they tend to turn in as they're driven, and the ideal is in for positive camber, out for negative, to compensate for rolling radius of a cone. With the swing-axle setup, the tracking also affects how it rides, and toe-in tends to give your symptom of squatting down in reverse and, conversely, jacking up when going forward. Since the biggest problem with swing-axle is the tendency to jack up, I always reckon you want a little toe-out to pull it down in normal driving. thus combatting the tendency to tuck-under. Certainly the cars I've owned which stood up when reversing have held the road better than the ones which squatted, but that's a fairly small sample.