kevinmalec

A few club members and I recently lowered my Stang with the Eibach Pro-Kit lowering springs. I took it to Kauffman Tires to get an alignment and they gave me a copy of the spec sheet.

From the research I gathered on the forum, as long as the camber is within -1.5 and I rotate my wheels every 6,000 miles, I should be OK. .

Is this accurate assumption or will I need a camber kit to correct the cambers?

Let me know your thoughts.

Thank you in advance!

"Current measurement"
FRONT ONLY
Camber Left: -1.5
Camber Right: -1.2
Caster Left: 7.4
Caster Right: 7.0
Toe Left: .01
Toe Right: -.01
Total toe: 0.00
Steer ahead: 0.01

Norm Peterson

It is all "within spec", but I suspect that the car will tend to drift toward the side of any back road that has much crown. The cross-camber and the cross-caster are both tending to make the car "drift right".

You are at the upper end of camber on the left side and fairly close on the right. Whether that becomes problem depends quite a bit on your driving, specifically how hard you normally take corners.

If you're a relatively mild driver once the road starts getting twist-y, but tend to use the brakes hard most of the time - you'll wear the shoulders of those front tires more rapidly than the middles and outer shoulders.

On the other hand, if you generally take corners with above-average "enthusiasm" (or take up autocrossing), the heavy cornering will tend to balance out the wear a little better by getting you up off the inside shoulders during some of the times that you'd be using the car hard.


Give it a few miles and see how you like it, and whether the settings suit the way you drive. Then fix it.

FWIW, if it was my car, I'd at least fix the camber to something that better matched the way I drove the corners - go with less if you're mild to moderate in the corners, even them up somewhere around where they're at now if you're moderately hard (and if you drive harder than that . . . ).

I would never, ever use aftermarket camber (crash) bolts on your year of the S197 chassis. Won't recommend them even if you're a mild driver.


Norm

V8 VOL

Why never, ever use camber bolts? I am getting an alignment done this weekend and will be having these installed because I am at -1.75 camber.....way outside of my liking. I have other issues as well, but the bolts were going to take care of this one.

kevinmalec

Norm_Peterson
Thank you for the detailed information, it is very helpful!
I am a not a mild driver or an overly agressive driver, maybe in the middle. ;-)
I will drive it around for awhile and see how I like it.
Thanks again!
Kevin

Norm Peterson

Because they cannot be torqued enough to provide the necessary clamping load. The OE torque on the early strut to knuckle fasteners is about 150 ft-lbs. Camber bolts are only good for about half that.

Under competition circumstances, there have been a few knuckle (aka "spindle") failures involving the OE bolts.

What would you expect from using bolts of smaller cross section (IOW, weaker) that can only be torqued enough to keep the strut tabs and the knuckle held together with only about half the OE force? And if that joint opens up at all under braking or hard cornering, it becomes a fatigue failure just waiting for "when". Don't count on "I always drive easy" to be enough of a safety margin. In a Mustang, you probably won't "always . . ." . . . Separately, if a camber/crash bolt is accidentally overtorqued above its spec, it's just been turned into a conversation-piece paperweight, plain and simple.


I understand your camber concern - there aren't very many people who could realistically maintain -1.75° as a DD camber setting. While I can't actually stop you from running the bolts, I'd MUCH rather see you with camber plates. So even if you get do the bolts now, keep thinking in terms of plates eventually.


Norm

V8 VOL

Dude, you are awesome! For me its more of a budget thing where $20 is much easier to swallow than $300....camber plates would be great, but would rather spend that money elsewhere.

Perhaps I will save my $20 for safety's sake, just get the alignment as good as it can get and worry about the other things (I am almost certain my toe is really jacked up and my tires are starting the dreaded cupping hum).

jrockgts197

+1

And FYI Ford did a running production change on the fasteners and now recommend an upgrade to a finer thread bolt with a torque of over 160 ft-lbs. Based on that information alone, I would be scared to put camber bolts in the car because there was obviously a reason to change the bolts and specify a higher torque value on the earlier cars.

J2L06GT

A way to get about +.75* back after lowering
is to turn the strut mount plate so the ID arrow
is pointed in instead of out, the hole for the strut
is offset by 7mm so this will move the top of the
strut out, same thing adj plates do.
You won't have the adjustability of plates but if
you don't go road racing should be fine.
I've been running this way for +2yrs with no problems.
Lowered 1" and at -.75* with no other adjustments.

Norm Peterson

THANKS for the tip.

That was a new one on me, so I went out to the garage to measure up one of my originals. Sure enough, the center hole was offset. But I only measured 0.20" difference from lines stretched outside the bolts (1.50" on the side opposite the arrow and 1.70" on the arrow side).

The other two measurements were also 1.50", so you aren't going to be changing your caster if you do this.

I'd expect an 0.2" difference to change camber by a little less than half a degree, 7mm difference to be good for a little more than 0.5° change.

Kevin - you might consider doing this mod to just the left side, leaving you with -1.25° right and I think somewhere between -1° and -1.1° left. That'll help your road crown issue, bring the really high setting back down to something more reasonable for most folks, and should reduce your cross-camber - all in one shot.


Norm

Norm Peterson

Yes.

And they reworked the knuckle just a tiny bit - I think they made it 0.020" thicker. I think that was more for making it more certain that the clamping load from the bolts was really clamping the parts together and not losing as much to bending the strut tabs into contact with the knuckle.


V8 VOL - I'd give J2L06GT's suggestion a try before doing either the bolts or the plates. All it'll cost you right away is the time it takes to unbolt the mount, drop it down, turn it 180°, and bolt it back in. Unless the bolt holes are sloppy-loose for some reason, you probably wouldn't need to get it re-aligned given that you know where it's at and you're only disconnecting at one point per side (the strut top).


Norm