Camber and Toe In Adjustment on Rear Trailing Arm

[mpate]

I thought I would share this with my buggy buddies. For quite some time I have been running into an issue with one rear tire seeming to have more camber, but the ride height is the same and the torsions are adjusted the same on both sides. After measuring and remeasuring my angles I began thinking that the three spring plate/trailing arm adjustment screws may lead me to the ability to straighten the angle a tad bit on the drivers side. So I measured from torsion cover to rear axle, with the shock compressed to level the two and pulled back the driver side about a quarter of an inch to even the two sides up and I will be dammed if did not fix the angle difference of the tires. I would figure that by pulling back the trailing arm, the camber angle would not change on the rear only the toe in/out. Has this happened to anyone else?
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Matthew Pate
1980 Kombi

[GS guy]

Pulling back the axle relative to the spring plate will effectively lengthen the "lever" working against the torsion bar (spring). This would likely slightly lower that side as now more pressure is being placed on the spring.
However, at the same time this will increase toe out.

It could be whoever set the toe previously didn't set it even from side to side (relative to the center of the chassis) and dialed in more toe from one side than the other. This could yield a good toe-in number, yet have the axles not "squared" with the chassis centerline. I'd think this would make the car "crab" a little going down the road.

The torsion bars have some pretty fine adjustment available by working inner vs. outer splines and should be able to even out most any difference from side to side. I'd imagine with 50 year old bars one could also have slightly less spring rate than the other.

Jeff
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70's vintage Deserter GS buggy - undergoing transformation to Super GS!