HermanH's PASSAT Site

Tools Required

K-MAC Camber Kit Installation

The K-Mac Camber kit is manufactured in Australia of all places, and designed to allow camber adjustment and some toe adjustment to all A4/B5 platforms from 98- on up. Most people who have lowered their Passats with aftermarket springs will experience a greater amount of front camber. Normal specifications for a Passat are between zero to -.83 deg. When I had my Passat at the VW dealership for an alignment, my car was sitting at approx. -1.4 deg. While this made handling on the car very good, wear of the inner tread occurs much faster than the outer. This may not be a desirable trait for some.

As you can see in the picture below, the camber kit is comprised of 4 camber bushings and two bushing removal/install tools (cylinders):

Installation:

1) Jack up the front of the car and set on jackstands.

2) Remove the lower 18mm lower control arm bolt to free the bottom of the strut:

3) Remove the (3) 16mm upper strut plate bolts:

4) Remove the 16mm bolt from the swingarm assembly to relase the two upper control arms:

5) Sometimes, it may be necessary to use a 3/8" extention to knock out the upper control arm pins due to rust; DO NOT use a chisel or screwdriver to widen the slots as a means to loosen the pins.

6) At this point the entire assembly should be removed, being careful not to tear the CV boot, and placed onto a bench vise; use a 13mm socket and remove the two 13mm nuts that secures the strut assembly to the mounting plate:

7) With the mounting plate free, remove the 16mm bolt on one of the arms. Work with one arm at a time; pay attention to which arm goes on which side of the plate as this will affect the geometry if you swap them accidently:

8) Using the two cylinders from the K-Mac kit, use the bench vise to help extract the original bushing:

Just a comparison of the two bushings:
 

9) We use the steel cylinders again to insert the new bushings, paying close attention to ensure the bushing is centered on the control arm:

10) Reinstall the control arm into the strut mounting plate but do not tighten the nut at this time.
 NOTE: Please note the orientation of the bushing's mounting hole with respect to the the upper strut mounting plate; this ensures there will be no interference with the control arm and the plate itself:

11) Repeat steps 7 - 10 for the other control arm; when you're done with both sides, tighten ONLY the the nuts to 72Nm (53 ft-lbs.) and reinstall onto the strut.

NOTE: Notice in the picture below, the nuts are facing out. The reason for this is to ensure there is ample space to tighten the nuts during adjustment. IF the nuts were inboard, it would be next to impossible to tighten the nuts after an adjustment; there simply isn't enough room.

12) Reassemble the mounting plate with the two 13mm nuts at 20Nm (15 ft.-lbs.)

13) Slide the entire assembly back into the car; be careful not to tear the CV boot. Secure the (3) 16mm bolts at 65Nm (48 ft-lbs.)

14) Lightly oil the upper control arm pins and push the pins into the swingarm assembly. Secure the 16mm bolt/nut at 40Nm (30 ft.-lbs.)

15) Align the bottom shock mount with the lower control arm and secure the 18mm bolt at 90Nm (66 ft.-lbs.)

Repeat all steps for the other side!

To adjust the camber, simply lift the car until the wheel is off the ground, loosen the 17mm nut; use a 5/8" open end wrench to turn the bolt which will turn the eccentric bushing either inbound or outbound, depending upon your application.|

In regards to the 5/8" bolt, this is the only odd part of the K-Mac kit; I found no metric wrench that would work well with the bolt except a standard SAE size.

NOTE: since it's impossible to get a torque wrench up into this area, you will have to tighten the nut ONLY, as much as possible since the bolt is used for adjustment purposes.

Notice how close the left wrench, 5/8" size, is to the coil. It was actually tighter than that on the passenger side!

Impressions: 
The first side took about 1.5 hours since I was taking my time, and taking a lot of pictures for this site. The other side took only 45 minutes to complete. Since I did have the benefit of a bench vise, I would rate this type of installation between easy and hard.  To date, I have not had the car on an alignment rack to determine where I have the adjustment set at, but I do notice there is a difference in feel as I believe I reduced the amount of negative camber somewhat, resulting in a more responsive feel.