Ground Control Camber Plates |
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What: Ground Control Camber Plates Why: The camber on my car is slightly off. I'm not sure what caused this, but I bought it that way. From what I hear, a lot of people have similar problems. Coincidentally, one of my other TDIs has the exact same camber shift... IMHO it is a factory defect, since they don't include any way to adjust camber on the Mark IVs. VW should pony up, but they haven't and won't. That leaves people with few options. One is to get the Sport Spindles from some after market company that allows fully Camber/Caster adjustment. The other is to get Camber/Caster plates, such as the Ground Control ones I put on the car. Usually, the GC plates are used for autocross, but I bought them to align my car. What I would do differently: I would not use the GC plates for a street car, and I am going to end up removing them and going back to stock. The GC plates are made of metal (as are all Camber/Caster plates), and thus transmit a horrendous amount of clatter from bumps in the road into the passenger compartment. I wasn't aware they were going to be this noisy. They are great plates for adjusting your camber and caster for the track... they are horrible for a daily driver. The plates I bought were used, and ended up coming (unbeknownst to me) with a set of H&R Spring perches, instead of the stock spring perches. As such, the perches did not sit properly on the stock springs. When I first installed these beasts, the noise shocked me. I emailed Ground Control, but never received a response. I finally called them on the phone, and was told that the noise was not normal and that the Koni shims I was using were the wrong ones... they sent me new ones for free. I was pretty pleased. Well, the new shims didn't quiet down the noise at all... so I tried to call them back. They were difficult to get ahold of, and no one sounded too interested in helping me at that point. In desparation, I posted a message on Vortex describing my problem. Apparently one of the guys from GC reads Vortex, and knew what my problem was right away - the spring perches were wrong. He told me who to call at GC and what to ask for. I paid $50 and had the new perches in my hot little hands within a week. I installed them, and the noise was still there. Yeah. Well, come to find out, the noise is pretty much the way it is with these plates. Suck it up. I'm going to suck up the stock rubber bushings and deal with the camber drift. Fuck you VW for not making the camber adjustable on the MK IV's. Where: |
