Technical Camber bolt diameter for 100hp

[Anipatish]

Hi All,
Just joined the forum but have been reading from time to time. Great source of information. Thanks all.
Wonder if you could clarify re which camber bolt to buy?
I have a 2007 100hp which for years has been pulling to the left regardless of tracking / tires changes.
From reading on the topic here and some research it seems either 10mm or 12mm, unfortunately I can’t measure before buying.
A mechanic did a camber geometry check today - driver side is 1.6 degrees and the passenger is 1.4 degrees, he confirmed that this causes pulling left.

Would appreciate if you could confirm the correct bolts diameter to replace the camber bolts.
Also, if you could recommend supplier /s?

Many thanks

 

[koalar]

Camber bolts will not help with pull to one side

By all means fit them


"confirmed that this causes pulling left." ?

The specs are quite loose. Plus or minus half a degree

So if one side was minus it's full tolerance and the other plus full tolererance you would have a full degree difference side to side you have 1/5th of that

The car has electric power steering, with electric centering, within reason you can make the car pull to the left or right via calibration of its sensor


Standard Panda is a M10 high tensile bolt

 

[DaveMcT]

Drive to a straight road with minimal camber and pull the power steering fuse. If it continues to pull there is an alignment problem. In my case, lazer alignment checks (2x) both said it was correctly set up. However, some beer can shims under the rear axle stubs solved the problem. It now runs straight and there is no excess tyre wear.

 

[PAMIC]

The previous reply makes good sense. Often when doing full 4 wheel alignement geometry checks and adjustment it was regularly identified that the rear wheel alignment was at fault. No amount of front end adjustment would compensate for this.
So get a proper 4 wheel alignment check done (Not a laseralign) and work from there. Yes technically there is no alignment adjustment on the rear of a Panda, but shims can be obtained and fitted; again a full 4 wheel alignment piece of kit is required to ensure correct shim & placement. However you may decide that the expense is not justified.
It is always best to try swapping tyres from side to side, unless of course they are directional, which you indicate you have done.
A final thought, on my car one tyre started to go out of shape, although barely noticeable it did lead to the car drifting to one side. As soon as new tyres fitted problem resolved. Never exclude basics and cheap / easy fixes first.

 

[koalar]

These cars have very little self centering built in to the geometry

The car uses an electric motor to return to centre

Pulling the fuse it will be pot luck if the car veeres to the left, right or tracks true and the car steering will be very heavy at low speed

I am talking about gentle veering here

I can make my car pull to the left or right at will by recalibrating the steering with the wheel off centre a few degrees

Worn TCA, different tyres or pressures, sticking brakes and so on need to be addressed first


My car has a bent rear beam, it's been in an accident down the offside and somebody has jacked under the centre of it. It still tracks true

Yes you can alter how the car takes by shimming

Yes it can altered by shortening one track rod end and lengthing the other

But it's far easier just to hook it up to a laptop

What I wouldn't be bothered about unless there is uneven tyre wear is the original poster camber. Especially as I suspect the alignment is probably being done on 4 bent alloys

Yes shimming the rear is valid if the rear alignment is out. The original poster has had an alignment done and they haven't mentioned the rear being out

Here's Fiat take

Active return​

The return stage refers to the realignment function normally produced by the geometry of the front section of the vehicle when the steering is released after a steering manoeuvre.This function is designed to make this realignment faster, causing the servo motor to intervene and assist the normal geometry effect.The active return correction varies according to the speed of the vehicle:maximum at low speedsminimum at high speedsThe servomotor carries out the active return of the steering wheel acording to the steering angle in relation to the centre. The greater the steering angle, the greater the effort of the motor to realign the wheels

 

[The Panda Nut]

My 100HP pulled to the left so hard I thought I had bought a lemon. However it was set up by a proper alignment firm and ran straight thereafter, They did slacken off the axle bolts and heaved it about improving the rear end alignement. They managed to sort its pulling and tyre wear out completely, Cost was c. £55.

 

[DaveMcT]

My 100HP was pulling left and rubbing tyres and the steering wheel was central when the heel were staring ahead (checked by me with long wood battens and more accurately checked by alignment tools). I drove to a straight road with minimal camber and pulled the steering fuse. Yes its (VERY) heavy at low speed but I wasn't concerned about parking. At 40mph, it just pulled left it was impossible to go straight. I put the fuse back and went home. I marked around the rear axle brackets with a Sharpie pen and tried to re-align them. Nothing I was unable to make any difference. Next move was to fir the axle shims and the pulling stopped. I tried it again on the straight road and (as @koalar says) there's a straight ahead dead band but the bias to left had gone. It's been great ever since.
I don't like the solution as I believe there is a chassis issue, but laser tracking found nothing and I don't intend to pay a body chassis alignment jig check.

 

[Anipatish]

Gents, thank you all for sharing your knowledge and experience. Much appreciated!
Reading your posts made me suspect that the wheels alignments I’ve done in the past were done by garages with quite limited alignment expertise.

Could you please recommend a garage doing 4 wheel alignment with the expertise and correct equipment (hunter ?) which solved your alignment issue?

(Panda Nut- you refer to one in your post).

Im London based but would be more than
happy driving to the ‘right’ garage to ‘cure’ this.

Thanks !

 

[portland_bill]

The hub mounting brackets welded to the rear beam are jigged poorly. The OE beams are often misaligned, hence the shimming effecting a cure.
Sadly, the aftermarket beams available seem to have copied an OE, so exactly, that the steering pull is replicated. An opportunity for aftermarket to be better than OE, has been missed.
My replacement beam came with all but one of the little brackets (brake pipes, hoses, etc.) all bent. Easily straightened. The supplier had a large pile of beams, all exactly the same. My guess is that an old OE unit was copied, and the bent brackets also copied exactly. Strangely makes me confident that the beam spec will be correct, if so much attention to detail has been applied.