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Old Jul 25, 2009 | 03:37 PM
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Default Alignment issues

I just swapped springs, shocks, upper and lower control arms.

I tried to get the car aligned, and the shop claimed they couldn't align the front end with the lower control arms being the same length as the stock ones. I adjusted them and they still claimed they can't do it, needless to say I'm done with them.


Can the car be aligned properly being lowered and having the A-arms the same length as stock?

These are UMI Lower front control arms.
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Old Jul 25, 2009 | 03:46 PM
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WTF?! That makes no sense at all! Are they saying they are unable/unwilling to do the alignment, or they can't obtain the alignment they're looking for??

What can't they do because of the arms? Is the camber or caster way off? Do you even know roughly what the numbers are at this point?

I had no problem getting the right alignment with my car with aftermarket lower arms.
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Old Jul 25, 2009 | 04:05 PM
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They claimed it was way to far off to get it back. Right now I'm in the process of putting the A-arms back to waht UMI told me they set them at.

Camber was close enough cuz I adjusted that myself but I couldn't do caster which is what they claimed they couldn't do. They didn't even try tho......
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Old Jul 27, 2009 | 09:57 AM
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if they didnt try then they dont know. Its possible that it might be too far to adjust but i would doubt thats the case of the camber is close enough to spec. at any rate, i believe with adjustable lowers anything is possible, may require moving the rear bushing in or out but its possible. You'd think the lowers would need to be shorter to get it to line up though.
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Old Jul 27, 2009 | 10:24 AM
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Are you going for a handling / autox alignment or just trying to get within stock specs?

You need to find an alignment shop you can trust, which is very hard in my opinion.

You can then have them put it on the rack and tell you what it reads at as is. Then by looking at where the A-Arms are in the adjustments slots you should be able to tell what you have to adjust to get where you want to be.
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Old Sep 10, 2009 | 01:13 PM
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Update:

That shop was full of ****. I had Merchant's do it and they got one side within spec. They were not able to get the other side within tolerance on the camber so I do have to take that side apart again and make a small adjustment, which they didn't bother to tell me about until I came back asking why it was not within tolerance.

Either way all alignment shops suck *** apparently.
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