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There are a lot of posts about negative camber correction on the rear wheels - the KMac kits and adjustable arms like gixxerboy posted about. But I've never seen a post showing how the front camber bolts work that MB sells. Compared to the fine tuning you can do on the rears set ups, the fronts are very crude. Basically, you replace the big bolt that holds the control arm to the frame with a nearly identical bolt that has two flutes along it length. Those flutes slide over the little nibs inside the control arm so that when its installed it holds the arm in another few mm. That pulls the lower part of the steering knuckle in, so the top of the wheel move out. That's it - no adjustment or fine tuning. The fine tuning comes with where they are placed. I have one on the upper right and lower left. My car used to pull right and wore my tires out on the inside prematurely. Now I wonder if I'll ever need new front tires. The are four years old and hardly worn. I could buy three sets of rears to one set of fronts. Rodney questions if I will still need the camber bolts since I replaced all four arms this weekend. I'll update after my alignment later this week. On to the pics:
All OEM or aftermarket control arms have these four metal nibs inside.
If you use the standard smooth bolt, it will only fit between the four nibs and is held in the center.
The camber bolts are the same diameter as the smooth bolts, but have two long flutes. The flutes are not quite opposite each other on the bolt shaft.
The flutes allow the camber bolts to fit over the nibs. You can see how the flutes are not quite opposite each other, so the bolt only goes one way. .
This shows how much movement you get compare to the smooth bolt being in the center. If you discover you have these bolts, you should make sure you get them correctly placed and not just in the center.
MBWorld wiki has a table that shows the "fine" adjustments. Camber & Caster Bolt Install 2.2 .jpg The table shows how adjustment on one control arm effects the other.
Anyone have a part number for the straight bolt without the flutes?
I replaced both upper and lower control arms on both right and left side a couple months ago, and placed the fluted bolts back as they came out. An alignment after the install only required toe adjustment.
Great post I like, do any other manufactures have this I wonder.
THESE FLUTED BOLTS ONLY OFFER A “MINIMAL” 1/8” / 3mm (.3 OF ONE DEGREE) ADJUSTMENT AND ARE A ONE ONLY SINGLE POSITION OFFSET!
AT K-MAC WE SAW THE NEED THEREFORE TO DESIGN, MANUFACTURE AND REINSTATE FROM THE EARLY 90’S “PRECISELY ADJUSTABLE” – SINGLE WRENCH ON CAR/ACCURATELY UNDER LOAD - DIRECT ON ALIGNMENT RACK FRONT CAMBER AND CASTER ADJUSTER KITS.
Offering up to 4 times the adjustment range of the one position fluted bolts. Allowing to fix it right the 1st time. To dial in and precisely resolve steering pull and premature edge tire wear.
Result of curb knock damage, altering height, load carrying, fitting wide profile tires or to be able to increase negative Camber for track days.
Added bonus is the kit also replaces the 4 front highest wearing bushings at the same time. K-MAC bushes are 2 axis/self aligning with twice the load bearing area.
Similar kits for the rear providing also Camber adjustment for the 1st time. Again precisely adjustable – single wrench on car/accurately under load.
Rear kit also includes extra Toe adjustment to compensate for the new Camber facility.
Also unlike rear “Camber arms” that need to close up important clearance top of tire to outer fender to resolve premature inner edge wear – the K-MAC design moves bottom of tire inward!
CAMBER – Allows to actually change the tire contact angle resolving costly, premature edge wear, improving traction/understeer/oversteer (Front and Rear Toe only available OEM)
CASTER – Correctly resolves steering pull, increases steering response. With better turn in and high speed directional control, along with improved anti dive/lift under brake and acceleration
Front Camber and Caster #502216K $480
Rear Camber (and extra Toe) C209/A209 6/04-09 (51mm OD lower arm inner bush)#501926J $380
01-5/04 (33mm OD lower arm inner bush)#502026H $320
Delivery MB World members $30 one kit or $40 front and rear. Can pay by Paypal, Visa or MasterCard.
OK, OK.... but we were only trying to point out that there is another alternative to only a miniscule 1/8 of an inch/one only offset position adjustment!
Thanks to Yidney! This is the best explanation of the Mercedes front suspension camber and caster adjustments I've seen in several sessions investigating alignment issues.
Sry to bump a 1.5 year old thread but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. The transverse arm on my 07' W203 4matic broke and I've been beating myself up over if I need new bolts.
Now because of what I've read in this post I now know that by just looking at the end of the bolt I can determine A) If I have the fluted bolts then an adjustment has been done, document it
and reinstall in the same position. B) If I still have the "standard" center mount bolts when I remove them, since the arm is toast anyway I don't have to worry about braking them off during
the removal of the old arm. - NP
Sorry to bump an old thread again but I need answers! I bought a CLK550 and went with lowering springs and now that the camber is not adjustable it’s not driving straight. So the camber bolts are only for the front? Is there any minor adjustment for the rear? I just want enough camber adjustment for the car to have equal camber.
Also anyone got a part number for the camber bolts? I can’t find them anywhere. FCPEuro has an Eccentric Camber Bolt Kit in stock but does not mention which cars it fits.
There are aftermarket camber adjustments for the rear, too. I've seen some in the forums that are actually fully adjustable like a tie rod mechanism.
You can find adjustable rear camber bolts at SPC performance part number SPCO-28840 and everything is available at Pelican parts . com
I do not really like the Kmac for the rear as they fit the lower control arm which has very soft bushings OEM both inboard and outboard so unless you also change the outboard bushing on the lower control arm the adjustment is not as precise nor solid as the adjustable bolt kits.
Not to dispute zip439 but I've had the KMAC rear kit for 4-5 years and they've been great. Getting ~30K miles on rears where I used to get 12K. The alignment was good and required minimal adjustment when I had it checked after tire change about a month ago. Got 29K on those rears. I had another 3-5K left on them but one had a nail puncture that could not be reliably repaired.
You can find adjustable rear camber bolts at SPC performance part number SPCO-28840 and everything is available at Pelican parts . com
I do not really like the Kmac for the rear as they fit the lower control arm which has very soft bushings OEM both inboard and outboard so unless you also change the outboard bushing on the lower control arm the adjustment is not as precise nor solid as the adjustable bolt kits.
Re above - "the lower control arm which has very soft bushings OEM both inboard and outboard"
Correction: Outboard arm - OEM has spherical bearings!
Inboard - we replace with precisely adjustable (single wrench) bushings which have more than twice the load bearing area of the soft rubber OEM bushes. Kit P/N 501926 K
These K-MAC rear kits also include extra "Toe" adjustment to compensate for the new rear Camber facility and unlike adjustable upper arms retain essential clearance top if tire to outer fender when adjusting to reduce inner edge wear.
To further reduce "rear end flex / twitch / loss of traction" kit P/N 501528 K uprates the bushings in the 6 multi link arms. Providing further significant improvement to traction / response - especially when applying power to lane change, overtake.
Similar design for the 4 main front bushings providing both Camber and Caster adjustment also for the 1st time along with significant improvement to brake and steering response.
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