I have been looking all over the net, I cannot find any information on how to adjust the bump steer on a Galant or 1st gen Talon. Does anybody have any information how to adjust it?
thanks
Rick

Rear bump steer?

If your car is lowered a lot, you can reduce bump steer by installing FWD knuckles. They mount the tie rod lower, keeping them flatter, so that bumps don't affect the steering wheel as bad when hitting them.

I have heim joints with adjusted the front suspension. I am looking to test and if needed to adjust the rear suspension
Rick

Well the way to adjust bump steer is by changing the point where the steering tie rod mounts to the knuckle. I'm not sure what adjusting the rear suspension is going to do for you. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Does the OP mean the active toe? There is no real such thing as bump steer on the rear axle as the rear wheels don't do the steering.

When you have independent suspension you will always have some bump steer in the rear . I am asking what modd I must make to make bump steer adjustable?
Rick

Are you talking about toe change with suspension travel? The rear toe is already adjustable.

I can't recall, do you still have the rear steer installed?

Poor guy. Asking a valid question and everyone is giving him sh*t.
Most people just buy "coilovers" and slam the sh*t out of their car, and claim it handles better because racecar. So good luck finding quality information on the internet.

Toe changes as the suspension travels. Ideally you can tune a lot of this out. I don't know of a way to do it on the rear because of the trailing arm. I think you would have to move the attachment point of the upper and lower control arms.

thank you gtluke. We have a similar rear suspension as a BMW. I looked on some BMW sight with no success. I was thinking of picking up a k member and modding the toe adjustment for a vertical adjustment for bump steer and using my heim joints for toe adjustments. My question would this make bump steer adjustable?
Rick

Do you know how to check for bump steer? If you do than the hard part is over. You will hav to mess with the suspention pickup points and lengths of the arms. Bump steer will change with any suspention movement .
The arms will start pulling in or pushing out causing changes in camber and toe and bump steer. It is no easy task achieving proper bump steer but to start you will need to remove te active toe and or rear steer. Also make sure all suspention parts are adjustable or new/no movement. This will make your readings more consistant.

The easy part is checking the bump steer. That is my question which control arms do I mess with? With an Evo the adjustment is with the toe rod control arm. Which control arm do we adjust with?
Rick

there is no dedicated bump steer "adjuster" you have to get adjustable arms and play with it. centerline the car,find the ride height you are going to be operating in, find the Max width you can run and min width. get your camber set, get the toe set and check bumpsteer. at that point if its WAY out you have to start making adjustments to where ever you feel is right to get the bump steer in check. weather its adjusting the top arm,lower arm or changing the pivot point on the main trailing arm. each car is different and will require a unique approach.

After you make adjustable rear arms make sure you share with the rest of us.

click I am still working on it. This is good reading
Rick

You'd have to change the pivot points of the suspension arms - so on 95% of all production cars there is no way to change the toe change over suspension travel on the rear axle - the height has to be adjusted so the arms are in an optimal position to get useful toe and camber changes over suspension travel. Just lowering the car isn't always better, especially because the roll center often changes to a degree that's not helping the handling.
the rear suspension on the galants is intentionally built to give more toe-in on compressed suspension, so you get more slip angle when cornering, thus making the rear more responsive. The rear steering further increases the slip angle.

On the mcpherson struts at the front you could use height adjustable steering rod ends (normal uniball joints + long, high-strength bolts with washers is the standard motorsport way...) and measure/adjust the toe-curve over suspension travel with an laser-leveler strapped to the rim and pointing forward and a big piece of paper in front of it. it's easier if you remove the spring for this precedure, so you can easily change the wheel height without raising/lowering the whole car and thus the pivot points. (don't forget to measure the height of the still standing car)

as you already removed the springs you can also record the camber changes over suspension travel (pointing the laser downward) - the more you know about what your suspension does when driving, the better you can improve it...


From what I measured/calculated so far at my car, the VR4 suspension definately needs some height and suspension travel for optimum performance - lowering the car too much will have the roll centres move too far down, making the car "wobbly" around the longitudal axis and also making the steering-trapezoid behave weird because the steering rods are pointing upwards (they should point slightly downward for best steering response/feel)
I'd say the optimum lowering is only around ~2cm on the front and ~3cm at the rear (the rear could be lowered a bit more than the front, especially to help reduce the change of center of mass when braking). Yes, this might not look as good as all the extreme-drop-bling-bling-suspensions which lower the front just above the ground, but it handles and behaves much better...

click Here is my profile from dsmtuners. I hope it comes up. I also have the car lowered about 1/2".
Rick

So our rear suspension will toe out when unloaded and toe in when compressed right?

I have not tested the rear suspension yet

Just as an idea, here is a rear bump steer kit that Whiteline makes for the Evo. click