Setting up suspension / alignment - camber plate settings don't match

[Black R]

Most recent alignment:

+8deg caster (tein tension rods almost maxxed out)
-3deg camber front
-2deg camber rear
.10 toe in all around

Using j30 rear uprights for ghetto 5lug and j30 rlca's (for the correct balljoint) modded to fit s13.

All other arms are stock, although I have rear adjustable toe/traction/camber arms ready to be installed...

Now the questions:

How do you guys adjust the camber via front plates? We were loosening the hex head bolts and then wailing on the coilover nut with a rubber hammer to push it outwards.... Should I have lifted the car off that corner, adjusted camber plates, then lowered?

Also, I wanted more like -2.5deg camber in the front but the right front went all the way out and I was at -3deg. The left front was nowhere as far out on the camber plate when it got to -3deg camber.
Perhaps something is bent? Or maybe the slop in the lower coilover mount ears is responsible? I have ingalls eccentric bolts I can throw on there also.

In the rear, the most I could push out was to -2deg camber via the stock eccentric bolts.
I guess I should have tried the j30 camber arms, but I already have some Megan adjustable ones I can throw on instead.

Pics:

[Def]

Yes, the proper method is to pick the corner up and you can move the camber plate by hand. It's got about 700 lbs of normal load on it, so assuming a static coefficient of friction of say .2 and you'd have to hit 140 lbs of force before it'd want to move. Not to mention probably scraping up quite a bit of stuff with that much load on it.

-3 deg up front doesn't sound bad up front, but -2 in the rear sounds like a lot. I'm running about -1.5 to -1.6 and it's pretty good there. I might tweak in a hair more, but it looks like the tire is very happy in pictures due to the camber gain back there.

Do your coilover to strut mounts have a slotted hole? If so, that's the cause of the different camber. It doesn't take much down there to add huge amounts of camber. 1/4" is many many degrees.


Ditch the toe-in up front. The car will be lazy to turn in and not really any more stable in a corner.

[josh18_2k]

if your plate is maxxed out towards positive, and you still have -3*, sounds like somethings not right (bent?)

[veilside180sx]

Which coilovers do you have again?

[PDM075]

Make sure the struts themselves are adjusted the same...whether they are fully pushed in, or pushed out so that you don't have uneven side to side camber. Often when I have customer who's car's top plates are in similar locations, but their camber is way off side to side, that is my first location I will look to loosen and equalize the side to side camber.

If it's still off - then chances are something is bent (spindle, strut, or front crossmember)

On my Hunter 4 post, I like to loosen off 3 of the 4 top camber bolts (and make sure you guys put never sieze on your 4 bolts.... - I dont' know how many hundreds of 240's I have come across in the past 12 years that the shop who installed the coil overs just wham-bam-thank-you-maam slams the coil overs in without first dis-assemblying them, and putting never sieze and lubricant on suspension components. I often wonder if 95% of my local so-called "performance shops" in town even have a can of never sieze on the workbench. I have about 12 cans in my shop....on work benches, work tables, at each hoist, and on all the tool chests. Those 4 little allen head bolts are actually exposed to the crap that the tires fling up...so dirt, water, grit, salt etc. all fly up and hit those tiny 6mm bolts, and we so often see these things siezed and have seen our fair share snap off, followed immediately by "FAWK")

and I will lightly loosen the 4th and final bolt, and use brass punches with a hammer to lightly move the camber inwards (more negative). If it goes to far, I'll use aluminum covered prybars to move it back outward, then work my way back in. This way it's more accurate than jumping down, lifting the front end (after freezing the program), moving the camber back out, unfreezing the program, jouncing the front end, then moving it back inwards. If the camber plate design does not allow me to put a prybar in, then I'll either grab the top nut with a muffler hanger hook, or worst case scenerio pick up the front of the car with the hydraulic jacks, and usually the camber will slide back outwards once the weight is off the front wheels. Tighten back up the single nut, and work my way back in to the desired camber.

But remembering that camber adjusted on one side will slighly creep higher (more negative) if you add a lot to the other side.

Too much camber on one side with the camber plates adjusted out all the way outwards (common on really slammed cars)....then you have undersized lower strut bolts in, or camber bolts in, that you need to PULL the strut towards you once you loosen both strut bolts, and tighten then while maintaining the pull.

Don't have enough camber ?...(common on cars with tall ride height), then do the opposite.

Toe in is pointless as noted....stick to stock or toe out to initiate turn in. Toe in or toe out will also wear out your tires faster.

-2 rear camber is not excessive considering how much front camber you are running...but it all depends on the ride height of the 240, the size of tires you are running, the hp the car makes, and what kind of driving is mainly done.

I basically will align my customer's cars to whatever they want, but there is so much discretion involved in each individual car based on it's ride height, size of wheel/tire and hp.

[Matt93SE]

The way I adjust the camber on the front is to leave the program running, set the brakes so the wheels don't turn, make a reading of what it is (say -2.5 and I want -3), then jack the car up to take some weight off. there's enough room to stick a small pry bar in my camber plates, so I take a rading of the camber once it's in the air, loosen the bolts, and use the prybar to adjust where I want to be. i.e. if I wanted to go -0.5 more and the car is now at -1.5 at full droop, then I just set it to -2.0.

tighten screws back up and put the car back down. the plates are all on sliders, so there's no need to jounce the car much. voila.


OH.. favor to ask.. next time one of you guys has an S14 on the alignment rack, can you check toe, move the camber via top plate by 1* and then check toe again?
I had to adjust my camber at the track the other day and only had one tape measure and a board to measure toe.. It looked like the toe changed less than 1/16" from the camber change, which I'm not concerned about, but I'd like to know what it actually did change so I can have an idea of how much room I have to play.

at the end of the day, adding another degree of camber didn't help my lap times, but it made the car feel sooo much better in the corner I was able to take T1-T2 at TWS about 10mph faster. I still wonder where I'm losing the time since that's a loong corner and 10mph difference in exit speed has GOT to drop lap times. I'm losing it somewhere else...

[Black R]

Veilside, they're kts SC coilovers.

I got a hell of a deal on them, so they're a tide me over until I can scare up the scratch for a double adjustable setup...

I'm thinking I just didn't set the knuckle into the lower mount at full on camber on the left side. I'll double check it next alignment. The funny thing is that I noticed the front left lca looks like it has a bend in it thanks to the previous owner... But that side aligned to the middle of the camber plate fine at -3... Weird.

Anyway, is it better to get camber in the front from the lower mounts or at the camber plates? Or does it even matter?

I'm thinking camber at the lower mounts causes the wheel / tire clearance at coilover to diminish.

*oops I should have posted this in the suspension forum. Somebody move it please?

[e1_griego]

That seems like a lot of camber for being in the middle of the plate.

[Black R]

That seems like a lot of camber for being in the middle of the plate.

What's even worse is that the other side is maxxed out positive on the plate and still at -3deg!

[josh18_2k]

im still gonna go with 'somethings bent'
or does KTS really build that much camber into the lower mounts? maybe a profile shot of your lower mounts would be a good indicator.

BTW, ~1.4mm in/out on one lower strut bolt = 1* of camber.

[Matt93SE]

My KTS on my S14 have quite a bit of camber in them as well. I can go from -2.5 to about -5 on mine, IIRC. they're fairly even side to side.
I'd vote for 'something's bent' as well.

[jbennett58]

You need to know your SAI,normally printed out automatically with other measurements,wrong SAI wrong camber = bent control arm,subframe,unibody.Correct SAI wrong camber = bent strut or knuckle.If top plate is all the way out your SAI is going to be less,all the way in greater.When we do alignments for local racers we try to get SAI and camber as equal as possible,unequal SAI tends to give different turn in feel,more noticable in slaloms.Greater SAI gives better straight line stability(thats why front wheel drive mini vans go straight even with crappy tires and alignments)but to much causes front end to raise when turning,bad for racing.I suspect your knuckle to strut mounting to be the problem.

[a250gpguy]

Please excuse my dumb question....

Can you explain SAI?
Thanks.

[Matt93SE]

http://www.familycar.com/Alignment.htm#Steering%20Axis%20Inclination%20%28SAI%29

[a250gpguy]

Thank-you!