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Les: As you may know, there is officially nothing other than toe-in that Saab says is adjustable on the front end. If camber or caster are out of spec, it is recommended to inspect and replace any worn or defective parts. I checked my toe-in with a crude home-made gauge which I made when I had a 1995 900S that gave me fits with poor steering. My 9-5 toe-in was fine after I replaced the front A arm bushings and the steering stability was better with the new bushings so I didn't bother with a professional alignment at that time.
Since then, I find a bit more side-side wander under heavy throttle or on roads with worn tracks. This (only much worse) was the problem with my 900S. The root cause on the 900S was uneven side-side front camber which I corrected by slotting the upper strut mount holes in the engine bay. I will add that the BEST steering stability over our uneven roads came with almost NO camber... maybe -1/2 degree when I was done. That was easy in that car but not really possible in the 9-5 since there is no real clearance to shift top attachment side-side from stock.
I checked my 9-5 camber recently by parking the car on a perfectly level surface and using a carpenter's level held perfectly vertical tight to the tire lower sidewall (exact same air pressure too). By measuring the relative gaps at top and bottom of the rim, you can get an accurate idea of relative camber at least. In fact, using trigonometry, you can calculate the angle from careful measurements.
In the older 9-5s, you can adjust the camber by buying eccentric adjusting bolts (Tirerack had some made by Eibach) for one of the strut to steering knuckle points or enlarge the strut holes for one bolt to allow some adjustment. I did this on a 1993 Passat and an extra 1//16" made enoughb of a difference to improve that car's steering.
Before the cold weather, I will be fooling with this in my 9-5 and report back.
Reg
posted by 142.161.10...
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