Andy13186

I had steeda sport springs and koni sport dampers installed and they did a "performance alignment" . Car ended up with some camber in the front. I wasnt expecting any without having bought C/C plates but there definatly is some. I am wondering if this will just wear my tires out faster or actually provide some benefits.

you can see the camber here





it looks kind of minor in the pics, but it looks more noticible from other angles

Norm Peterson

I hate to sound crotchety this early in the day, but I'm positive that your shop told you they "gave you a performance alignment" because they couldn't fix the visible camber that resulted from the lowering without buying and installing different parts and/or adding labor. That would have meant camber plates, Steeda HD strut mounts, "camber bolts", or by some other sort of modification. All because there is no built-in camber adjustment. What they did was no more of an alignment job than resetting the toe (if they even bothered to do that).

These cars do come off the production line with a little negative camber - it's intended to be -0.75° but is allowed to vary half a degree to 3/4 of a degree either way from there. At -0.75° you probably wouldn't notice just by eyeballing it, at
-1.5° or so most people probably would.

Lowering these cars will always make the camber go more negative, and a 1.25" lowering will make the camber go about 3/4° more negative than it was before lowering. So it's no surprise that you notice it now but didn't before.

There are several DIY methods of measuring camber (I'm being absolutely serious about the DIY part), and once you find out what it is and define just how hard you're going to be taking the car around corners you can decide what - if anything - you're going to do about it.

FWIW, I'd rate camber in the range of -1° to maybe -1.2° as being mild to moderate performance specs (in which case most people don't need to do anything), and driving daily on anything past -1.5° as getting up into hardcore corner-carving territory (where you'd probably want to correct it if this does not describe a significant portion of your driving).

Camber being a little off isn't as hard on tires as bad toe, so at least for the short run it shouldn't be a problem wear-wise.


Norm

Entaille

I mirror Norm's sentiments. if it bothers you, you'll have to get hardware to correct it. there are a lot of solutions out there. they probably claimed a 'performance alignment', because they couldn't get the front back into spec. hopefully they corrected the toe at least.

did they give you before and after printouts of the alignment? perhaps we can help more with that information.

Andy13186

Thanks for the info. They did not give me a print out. The car was lowered onto steeda sport springs which are 1 inch lower in the front 1.25 inch in the rear. Car does feel different when doing U turns. Ill try it out for a while with this setting i suppose. I do very little corner carving, i live in Florida and most roads are just straight lines but I wouldnt mind having a bit extra maximum cornering performance potential if it doesnt negatively effect anything too much.

Andy13186

I hit a manhole cover and now my steering wheel seems to be off a bit. Im not sure if it was slightly off before or not but when i have it perfectly straight, the car turns to the right. The shop said the suspension may settle a bit and they will look at the alignment again.

Should a decent size manhole cover bump be able to mess up alignment? I was hoping alignment would stay how it was set even after hitting those type of things.

Ill have it back there within 2 days.

Andy13186

you can see the major camber difference from this

12GTPDX

Can't comment on the manhole cover putting the alignment out of whack, but generally speaking, when installing lowering springs, they will settle in over the first couple of weeks after install -- it's common to let this settling take place before getting the car aligned post-lowering.

Andy13186

took it back to the alignment shop and they said the front right was 2.1*, front left 1.3*

so i need camber bolts.

Im looking at the eibach camber bolts

http://www.stranoparts.com/partdetai...205&ModelID=35

hope these will work with the 2011+ specific koni's, anyone know for sure?

corruptor

Are you on GT500 strut mounts? Apparently you can reduce the negative camber depending on which way the strut mount arrows are pointing.

Andy13186

no, stock 2011 strut mount(or w/e 2011 stock is), with the new 2011+ specific koni sports.