Originally Posted by El_Tortuga
I also wanted more negative camber for autocross and track duty so I bought camber plates. I tried the vorschlag but they don't offer a spring perch that fits stock style springs right, and they fumbled the strut fit so I ended up running back and forth to their shop several times. For $500 plus, I didn't feel like a "beat the spring with a BFH to fit" was appropriate. Vorschlag took them back, and I ended up buying the Maximum Motorsports camber plates for $300. They fitted and worked as advertised. Their offering includes the spacer bushings to handle either length strut. The MM plates have slotted caster settings so you can adjust. With the Vorschlag plates you have two holes to choose one caster setting or the other and the more aggressive caster may limit your camber adjustment unless you carve on the strut towers (illegal in SCCA for most classes).
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Well, there are always two sides to every story, and your situation with us was more complicated than that. Here's my version... and like they say, somewhere between these two stories is the truth.
First, one of our order guys did put something together wrong on his camber plate order, which I apologized for and still regret. Vorshlag camber plates, unlike virtually every other company on the planet that makes a "spherical strut top mount with camber adjustment", are made to only be sold with a new upper spring perch. Our modular design takes into account several measurements on the "strut stem" (that can be and ARE often different between strut brands), such as the various diameters, lengths, shoulder styles and thread pitches (and thread lengths). Then we make a variety of OEM and coilover style upper spring perches with an integral, sealed radial bearing (with single and double row bearings available). All told we can make an "S197 Mustang" camber plate in 150 ways, so it is easy to miss one piece of the puzzle and have it not fit correctly. On "El_Tortuga" here we made that one mistake...
He then came up to our shop to have us correct it - luckily he was somewhat local and we could fix it on the spot, which we did in a manner of minutes. And when we sold him this set-up he told us he was doing performance suspension work (autocross), so we sold him one of two spring perches we use for OEM style springs on the S197. Here's a hint - making these is NOT easy, and between the various automakers we have a dozen different diameters, styles, shapes and heights of "OEM" perches to fit various makes and models. The one we sold El_Tortuga fits tighter on the spring (shown above, no rubber isolator), and everyone we've sold it to understood that it takes a bit of force to get the spring to fit over the diameter. The other version we make is smaller and works with the stock rubber spring isolator (shown below), which we use for more street oriented set-ups.
This comes from the fact that we use OEM two different perches from BMW because the Ford perch isn't modifiable to work with our design. The two BMW perches are slightly smaller and slightly bigger than the Ford perch, though. Its.... complicated (more below). When El_Tortuga got home he was not comfortable forcing the perch over the ID of the spring (the spring doesn't care and it doesn't hurt anything or affect the performance). We tried to explain how to do it, and that there was another solution that used the rubber isolator, but he was so "fed up and furious" with making two trips to our shop that I gave him a 100% refund, on the spot. We were never going to make him happy at that point, and even with a full refund he is still ticked off... sorry. Can't be fixed at this point so I might as well correct his version of the events.
Also, there are a LOT of manufacturers of aftermarket lowering springs and we have seen some tighter than others. Just wanted to add that, too.
Please, all I ask is that everyone else reading this doesn't confuse this one person's lack of patience with the installation (granted, we screwed up the initial order, which I chewed some ass here about) something that could be construed as a "bad design". Our design is admittedly more complicated to correctly order than others, but we do have two OEM spring perch solutions - one for street guys and one for more competition oriented uses, and we thought we sold him what he needed, but didn't get a chance to get him what he wanted.
Sure, we could make a custom CNC machined billet aluminum OEM style perch that fit the S197 spring perfectly, and that took our radial bearing and strut adapter bushing, but it would add even more to the cost of this already pricy OEM set-up.
The Maximum plates are very different in many ways, and they work differently (no upper perch, radial bearing, etc.) than ours. I can't sell a camber plate like everyone else does, the "one size fits all" widget that you just slap on top of the stock spring perch, because I know what makes our design work so well and last so long - the upper spring perches sealed radial bearing. We've been making camber plates for 11 years and after tens of thousands sold we know we make the best, most reliable, longest lasting design, and why. Nobody else includes a new upper spring perch with an integral sealed double row radial bearing like Vorshlag (no "c") because it is MORE EXPENSIVE TO MAKE and more complicated to configure correctly.
We did make a CNC aluminum upper perch this for the BMW 1M OEM spring fitment (see above and
here) and that is a $529 camber plate set-up, due to the added billet aluminum perch costs. That car originally used a flat style OEM upper perch, but the helical style perch on the Ford would be even more costly to make as a custom billet unit... and nobody wants to pay for a $600 camber plate. So far, our S197 camber plate with the "2 OEM style" upper perch solution we have works, and we've had exactly
one set returned for dissatisfaction.
Lastly there are actually
3 fixed caster settings on our camber plates (it only looks like 2 if you don't understand what you are looking at). The stock setting (dead center of strut tower opening), then two settings that each add +0.5 deg of caster. We could have made a "sliding" adjuster for the caster, like our camber adjuster on the S197 design, but didn't. Why? Two reasons: one, it would have made the camber plate thicker, which eats up bump travel. Nobody else seems to care about the stack-up height of the camber plate as we do, and we go to great lengths to minimize that measurement. Two, after talking to alignment techs they told us that aligning a car with a sliding caster adjustment (which a lot of designs do) is a huge pain in the ass. Honestly, caster isn't something you "fine tune" with at the track for improved handling, unlike camber, toe, and tire pressure.
Our TT3 Mustang has an unmolested strut tower opening and can get close to -4 degrees of camber
With our 3 caster settings either you get the stock caster (+6 degrees, which in my mind is PLENTY) or bit more or a LOT more caster. And any extra caster you add on this chassis is going to cost you negative camber adjustment, due to the VERY small hole in the strut tower. We make the added caster and camber adjustment range in there for racers that are allowed to notch the chassis, but 95% of the folks use the stock (middle) caster setting and maximize the inboard
camber travel, leaving the strut towers untouched. There is an example of a modified strut tower opening shown below. The Boss 302-S chassis is also notched for added caster.
Modified strut tower opening for max caster/camber travel with Vorshlag cc plates
Anyway, that's how I remember it.
Cheers,