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I just put the car on the hoist and noticed one front wheel at negative camber. Closer inspection shows the Camber Adjustment bolt appears to have moved, and broken the "fence" (both sides), and it looks like it may have moved regularly from the shiny marks under the bolt head and fastening nut.
For this to happen, surely it must not have been tightened enough?
Should these bolts be torqued to any particular setting?
Is it repairable? Or does it need replacing?
I've emailed KW to get their opinion, but what do you all think of this?
My experience with camber adjustment bolts and slotted shock bodies is that they are less than ideal. They tend to slip under heavy load. Track/autoX especially. IMHO the nest thing to do is to grind off the fence, tack weld stainless washers to eliminate the slotted hole and then use camber plates to adjust camber. Welding the washers as far away from the shock as you can will give you more room between the tire and shock body to allow for wider wheels.
I've found KW's stainless shock bodies to be relatively soft. I'm not sure of what grade SS they use. KW have a good warranty though and may replace them if you are the original purchaser.
I've done a temporary repair by making some shims up, different colour since one side was slighter smaller than the other. I like the idea of welding on washers, but didn't want to touch anything till I hear from KW, nothing yet. I have an event this week, so needed to effect a repair. I put back in the original bolt as I needed clearance to the remaining fence. I've set it to maximum camber. I have camber plates so can fine tune there.
This is a known issue with KW V3 shocks.
The supplied bolts are not threaded on a long enough section, and the nuts reach the end of the threads before they are tightened hard enough against the body of the shock absorber. Eventually they loosen and break the "fences".
The KW supplier I got my kit from included a set of bolts with longer threads and I never had this issue.
I didn't check the thread length when I put them back in, but I'll have them out again next week so will take a look then. If that's the case, then no amount of torque when tightening is going to solve it - I can use a die to add some thread, but based on the comments from KW and folks here on Rennlist, I'm looking to upgrade now and retire these.
KW got back to me:
"The Variant 3 dampers are for street use only, due to the much stronger forces on the racetrack.
You should go for a 2 way competition kit, the dampers and housings are made for the higher forces on the race track.
You can bring them back in shape with a tiny hammer and re-weld the camber adjusters.
Buying new V3 dampers doesn’t make sense, because the dampers aren’t made for the racetrack.
The excenter screw is strength category 12.9 so it can be tightened with 150Nm max."
Reasonable advice, and I don't know what the criteria the previous owner of the car used when he installed these - certainly the original M030 shocks are way bigger, but cannot be lowered nor did they have the top hat type camber adjustment.
We had a similar issue on my 2 way race versions too. While I really liked the ride quality of the KW's there are a couple of flaws and really they should attend to this.
I didn't check the thread length when I put them back in, but I'll have them out again next week so will take a look then. If that's the case, then no amount of torque when tightening is going to solve it - I can use a die to add some thread, but based on the comments from KW and folks here on Rennlist, I'm looking to upgrade now and retire these.
KW got back to me:
"The Variant 3 dampers are for street use only, due to the much stronger forces on the racetrack.
You should go for a 2 way competition kit, the dampers and housings are made for the higher forces on the race track.
You can bring them back in shape with a tiny hammer and re-weld the camber adjusters.
Buying new V3 dampers doesn’t make sense, because the dampers aren’t made for the racetrack.
The excenter screw is strength category 12.9 so it can be tightened with 150Nm max."
Reasonable advice, and I don't know what the criteria the previous owner of the car used when he installed these - certainly the original M030 shocks are way bigger, but cannot be lowered nor did they have the top hat type camber adjustment.
You can go with a top camber plate and lock the adjustment where you are having difficulties. There are a number of solutions to lock it in place.
Bob, thanks, the current solution with KW has top camber plates as well as the lower adjustment which originally was the only M030 shock absorber camber adjustment available. So I've locked the bottom on the RHS and checked the LHS. I'm not inclined to trust this too far and fortunately the event this weekend is not a sprint but a Regularity event so I shouldn't be pushing too hard.
Once I get it all back together, I'll do the camber adjustment using the top plates.
When I undid the camber adjusting nut on the lower RHS a few days ago, I had to get a seriously long bar to undo it, so it's not like it was "loose", it had just slipped across under duress I guess.
Unfortunately the KW Camber plate is also one of their weaknesses. We switched to the Racer's Edge version which was better from a droop and strength p.o.v.
04-22-2017, 03:17 PM
Broken KW Shock Camber Adjustment "fence"
