allinon72

No, the logic is everyone should have their alignment CHECKED first. A mild drop may not require anything. After you get the specs, you can install camber bolts or plates.

Tylus

x2

a mild drop like the Roush is easily corrected by new camber bolts. you might even be able to squeeze the new adjustments using the OEM bolts. maybe

Camber bolts are about $25, so I highly recommend EVERYONE install them when doing new springs.

then get it all aligned

bigstick

Yes. When Roush does the work for you at their Install Center in Livonia, an alignment is part of the price.

Norm Peterson

Camber bolts are probably OK for cars that are only mildly to moderately cornered and braked, but not for anything that gets driven harder. There have been a few knuckle failures with the OE coarse thread bolts under extreme driving conditions (specifically autocross, but you should think about how hard and how often you hit your favorite Interstate on-ramp or other curves).

Simply put, camber bolts cannot be tightened even to the OE bolt torque spec, let alone anywhere near tight enough for really hard use. They are otherwise known as "crash bolts" due to their original use for returning a car to (somewhere near) correct alignment following a crash that bent/tweaked the car's chassis. As far as I'm concerned, they are a band-aid "solution" for mildly driven cars only.

Absolutely get the alignment checked. Or at least check it yourself (this is WAY easier than the fancy shop equipment makes you think it is). Adjust as necessary, keeping in mind that changes in camber usually cause the toe to change as well.


FWIW, camber probably changes by a little over half a degree more negative per inch lowered. If you measure the cambers (do both sides) before turning any wrenches, you'll have some idea where they should end up.


Norm

nemosgt

x2. From experience, not good for the track. A mild drop will give you a little more negative camber, but it will increase the handling and stance of your car for only a little extra inside tire wear. I usually do not correct any negative camber from lowering springs and was using the "crash bolts" in order to increase the negative setting.

Cheers.

Sleeper_08

+3 on not using Camber bolts if your car is driven hard.

Ford even did a running upgrade on the factory strut to spindle bolts from coarse to fine thread so that the torque could be increaded from 148 to 166 ft lb. Compare that to the torque limit on your camber bolts.

Tylus

I'm surprised you think Camber Bolts are worthless. I had Camber/Caster plates on my 2003 GT that was lowered 1.5".

those things looked very "suspect" when installed. I regretted having them immediately, but the car wouldn't align to spec without them. From my own experience, they looked much more likely to move around and get tweaked by hard driving.


If you drive your car hard, to be honest I wouldn't mess with the camber at all. But that would be because the tires will show the abuse and will be changed at a much more frequent interval.

A street driven car should be corrected IMO. Most people just don't check or maintain their vehicles enough to drive around. I'm a straight line kinda guy personally. I've found that corners tend to end up in bad situations. Especially with me behind the wheel. Maybe I'll regret the camber bolts. I doubt it though.

btw, I bought a cool magnetic angle finder for setting my rear pinion angle. I plan on using it to get a before and after readings on the front wheels. Should get me close enough for Gov't work

Tylus

I do wish I could use the "new" GT500 camber bolts that have the fine threads. Shame I can't.

Norm Peterson

One point is that the torque spec on camber bolts is too low for cars that are driven hard, meaning hard braking and cornering. Hard acceleration has little effect on strut to knuckle loading until you start pulling the front wheels off the ground and they slam back down every once in a while.

Although it might look like C-C plates could slip, it isn't as likely to occur as you might think. Basically, the lateral loads up at the strut tops that might move them around are not nearly as high as the loads on those two closely-spaced strut to knuckle bolts. Don't forget to include the friction resistance to the plates slipping that comes from the weight of that corner of the car (roughly, 1000 lbs * 0.3 coefficient of friction = 300 lbs).

Personally, I'd be more worried that camber bolts might "un-adjust" themselves in only moderately hard service.


Actually, if you drive hard, your camber should be intentionally set with your version of hard driving in mind to equalize wear rates across the tread.

A car that is used at the dragstrip but sees little else will benefit from approximately zero camber with the front end raised slightly as it would be under steady state WOT acceleration (probably in 3rd gear).

A DD that is never cornered hard but sees fairly frequent heavy braking (think commuting in four lanes of creep-and-beep traffic here) probably wants less than the factory preferred (which is -0.75° for the S197).

A car that's cornered hard wants the camber to be more negative than factory preferred. A lot more negative if there's going to be much autocross or road course running (FWIW as a data point, I'm getting almost dead-even tread wear in fairly hard street driving with camber that's 0.3° "out of spec" at -1.8°).

Being able to drive the corners smoothly and briskly is a skill worth learning. Seriously. The emphasis is on "smooth" before "brisk".


BTW, if your angle finder is digital, you can work to ±0.1° which is more than adequately precise for "final" work. If it's a protractor type, you can work at least to ±0.15° with a carpenter's combination square and a ruler that's divided to 1/32" or finer. I have a write-up in Word 97 if you're interested (PM me with an e-mail to send it to).


Norm