Norm Peterson

Camber is something that you can check for yourself with a level, a small scale, and a little trig function math. Or with a digital angle finder; then you can read camber angles directly (to ±0.1°, which is plenty close enough for just about any driving). You do need a setup area that's level at least side to side with either of those methods. There's a different method using a roofing square that doesn't care about the pavement being level as long as it is flat (no bumps/humps/high or low spots).

It is possible for the rear axle cambers (and toes) to not be zero, though it's unlikely that they'll be very far from zero (half a degree in an axle not intentionally cambered would be a huge amount). You can make those measurements yourself as well. FWIW, rear cambers as high as -0.5° shouldn't wear tires all that badly unless the driving includes frequent wheel-spin and little or no hard cornering.




My opinion is that optimum camber depends very much on an individual's driving habits. Mfr preferred settings are good for some overall average kind of driving for the classic 'average driver', where performance is not a priority. Simplified, mainly highway and straight line driving can benefit from setting cambers a little less negative than factory preferred, serious corner-carving needs cambers to be considerably more negative (-2.0° in the above picture). Somewhere in that range is every individual's optimum setting. Factory camber for at least the early-years of S197 calls for -0.75° (preferred), with 0° being the minimum negative and -1.5° the maximum negative.


Norm