Hi everyone, I just had a shop install a pair of J&M rear LCA's and some Whiteline relocation brackets. On my drive home I immediately realized that my steering wheel was way off to the right but the car wasn't pulling one way or the other.

I did a little searching and found some people tested the thrust angle by using a tape measure and measure the distance of the tire from the fender. This was mearly just a starting point to narrow things down. Sure enough, I'm about a half inch off between both sides of the car.

Could the shop have installed these incorrectly? I know that both the arms and the brackets have a very specific way of being aligned and installed. This is a setup that is supposed to correct everything in the rear, not worsen it so I can imagine that something is wrong with the parts. Just don't know what to do as this shop charged me $230 for something that took them an hour and they had all the instruction and everything they needed. No reason for a bad install except laziness. Any ideas??? Thanks everyone!

 

Did you pay them to do a 4 wheel alignment? if you didn't pay for it I would bet they didn't do it...

 

You shouldn't need a 4-wheel alignment after installing LCAs & brackets. I'll bet the shop didn't install them correctly so my advice would be to go back to the shop and ask them to check their work.

 

Take it back to them. Thats such a simple install they should not have screwed it up. You should go over the instructions yourself to familiarize yourself with it. Its not complicated at all.

 

If the LCAs are adjustable, thrust angle absolutely does need to be checked, no matter how fussy the installer thought he was being about matching their lengths to the OE LCAs. If one LCA is only one turn off from being the right length, you'd have to be blind to not notice how far off the steering wheel ends up (most people would notice a half turn error). Never mind how I know this.

Same deal if you're adding relo brackets, because dimensional tolerances on the locations of the adjustment holes and how well they fit up to the axle's own LCA brackets can and will cause thrust angle errors.

Incidentally, I wouldn't trust measuring to anywhere on the sheetmetal for anything but diagnosing really bad axle thrust angle errors. If the steering wheel was straight before the LCAs and brackets went on, that's what I'd trust for ending up with the axle being pointed in the right direction. If you have to steer to the right in order to go straight, either the left side LCA is too short or the right side LCA is too long, or it's a little of both. Me, I'd shorten the right side LCA because aftermarket LCAs with firmer bushings don't need as much pinion angle so you might as well make your LCA adjustment in the direction that gives less PA.


Norm