[s-cars] 2Bennett Camber Plate Install - Observations & Tips

[Fred Munro]

I installed the 2Bennett Camber plates a couple of days ago and had the car
aligned Thursday. The alignment hoist broke near the end of the job and I
have to go back to get it re-done, but we got in quite a bit of time playing
with the camber plates to check out the effect on the alignment. Some
observations based on my experience:

Summary:

1. The camber plates are well designed and well made. Good job, 2Bennett!
2. Fairly good customer service. Ken is hard to get a hold of but when you
do talk to him he knows his product. He has promised to partially make good
an error in shipping that cost me extra $.
3. Installation instructions are clear and installation is easy but I
question some torque specs.
4. The plates will adjust out excessive negative camber on a stock
suspension. The caster adjustment in the plates is enough to compensate for
the negative caster induced by the corrected camber. If you have an existing
caster problem, the plates may not correct it.

Details:

Design:
	The plates are true plug & play - there are no mods required to the strut
or tower. The OEM plastic cap even fits back on over the plates. The only
heads-up is that the 2B plates are too large to fit through the hole in the
strut tower, so if you want to remove the strut intact, you'll have to
re-install the OEM top plate. The design is quite good and appears to make
the most of the adjustment potential available. The plates are very well
made and appear quite robust. My only question is the life expectancy of the
spherical bearing, but time will tell - 2B can supply replacements at $35 or
so.

Customer Service:
	I had asked the plates be shipped U.S. Post rather than UPS to save the
exorbitant brokerage fee UPS charges for cross-border shipments. Apparently
2B's new assistant thought USPS was UPS and shipped them UPS. That cost me
$56 in brokerage fees. Ken was very apologetic about this and after a few
calls has agreed to refund me part of the cost. Unfortunately, I must have
spent another $50 in long distance calls so far!

Installation:
	The instructions are clear and the procedure simple. Some tips:
		a) Make sure you haven't had the wheel jacked off the ground and then put
it back down to do the install. This will induce severe positive camber in
the suspension and make installing the plate difficult. Drive the car into
position and leave the wheel on the ground to do the install.
		b) The 2B kit comes with trick locknuts to secure the camber plate to the
strut. These are 16 mm SS nuts with a 5 mm Allen screw inside them to lock
the nut to the stud after torquing. The nuts have a flat face and a conical
face. The flat face should be down against the washer. Some of the nuts may
have the lock screws in the wrong end and if installed as received will have
the conical face against the washer. Check and re-orient the lock screws as
required.
		c) Use a 22mm socket on an extension to move the top of the shock shaft
around to get the plates lined up with the studs.
		d) 2B specs 16 ft-lb on the four 6mm Allen screws securing the spherical
bearing holder to the main plate. My fastener torque guide specs 4 ft-lb for
a standard 6mm bolt steel on steel. The 2B setup is steel on aluminium.
These are Grade 12.5 bolts, but I suspect 16 ft-lb will stretch these bolts.
I used 8 ft-lb. Ken will check the torque specs on these bolts.

Alignment:
	The alignment specs for the UrS4 are as follows:
		Camber -0.58 degrees, range -1.08 to -0.08 degrees
		Caster 0.915 degrees, range 0.25 to 1.58 degrees


	On the alignment last year we had to shift the subframe to even out the
camber on my car. The best we could get was:
		Left Side:	Camber -0.93	Caster 0.95
		Right Side:	Camber -1.04	Caster 0.36

	Note the right side has a caster problem. Caster is not adjustable with the
OEM system. This type of caster disparity will cause the car to pull towards
the side with the lowest caster.


	Installing the 2B camber plates and a bit of work on the alignment rack
resulted in the following:
		Left Side:	Camber -0.55	Caster 0.95
		Right Side	Camber -0.55	Caster 0.25

	Correcting the camber threw the toe way out and made the caster more
negative. The left side is no problem - there appears to be lots of
adjustment in the plate. The right plate is at the limit of the caster
adjustment and is still out of spec. We repositioned the main plate 1/3 turn
and got lots of caster adjustment but no camber adjustment. We were just
getting ready to try to shift the right side of the subframe forward when a
cable in the alignment hoist started to fail strand by strand. We managed to
get the car on the ground in one piece. Nobody ever said these cars were
light :o).
	I have to go back once the hoist is fixed. Flipping the plate 180 degrees
may give more caster adjustment as would slotting the strut mount holes to
the rear and moving the subframe forward. I'll post the results.

Fred Munro
'94 S4