Set me straight please.

I arrived at Blackboots a touch early for my appointment and had to wait for 10mins while they finished off another customers car.  Once BART was on the ramp they quickly got to work setting up whilst I had another gander at his underparts!  The guys quickly noted a number of areas that needed work.

Firstly the front axle toe was way out, the wheels where toe'd out by nearly 2deg...this was the main cause of the car feeling uncertain and vague about the straight ahead position, it wanted to steer itself and follow uneven road surfaces.

Also, the front near side castor was out and they adjusted this by inserting a shim behind the radius arm mounting point.  The rear toe of an X19 is adjustable and BART was right on the limit of acceptable here and a decision was made to leave it for now and adjust later as a far more pressing issue needed to be resolved; the rear near side wheel had too much negative camber.  To adjust this I needed to get some offset cam bolts from Eurosport UK so another order was placed with Claire and they arrived the following day, great service!

These ingenious devices replace the upper suspension strut-to-hub bolt on both sides of the car.  The camber is adjusted by slackening of the lower strut-to-hub bolt and turning these with their offset cam to move the hub in relation to the strut outwards or inwards pivoting around the lower bolt.

So another trip will be required to Blackboots once I get the new bolts fitted.  The drive home was far more enjoyable though, despite the need to do more work the car felt so much better.  It felt planted on the road, no longer feeling nervous and vague and the steering feel was much improved, in other words it inspired confidence and I felt safe in exploring the limits of the car more through the corners...TBC