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I've finally finished up a great deal of work on my car. Only problem now is alignment.
Question is will adjustable front upper control arms be able to dial it in? Do I need to worry about damaging my new wheel hubs/bearings with the current alignment? I am not particularly excited about spending a lot of money on front adjustable control arms. So I would like to limit to exactly what will give me the adjustments I need.
What I am looking to achieve:
Mild Street Alignment:
0 Toe
-.5 Camber
+4.5 Caster
Suspension Mods - Strano Springs, Sway bars, Koni 4/4 Sports, UMI Shock tower brace, and UMI Subframe Connectors, UMI rear single adjustable Pan-hard bar, and rear LCA's.
Over the last few weeks I replaced the front upper and lower control arms, bushings, and ball joints. All MOOG except the control arms that where stock replacements. The old ones were really rusted and had to be cut off the K-member anyway.
Pics of the work I did to better explain. The rust did't make it
My question to you is, why do you want only -0.5 camber with 4.5 caster? I know there's a site (Angelfire) that lists mild street alignment at those exact specs I believe. Not to bum you or anything but that recommended alignment for mild street is pretty conservative. What you have now is definitely much better than what you're looking for.
I ran (on my 4th gen camaro) -1 camber with 5 caster and a slightly toe out alignment, and after 2 autocross events, my outside edges of my tires were destroyed. Mainly because I sucked at driving but also that alignment that I was running wasn't aggressive enough either. My current vehicle is at ~ -2 camber front and rear with 9 caster and it's been daily driven on for 6 months for 7,000 miles + 2 autocross events and the tread on the tires is about dead even from side to side. Albeit it's a McPherson strut and not a double wishbone like the 4th gens, but still relatively the same concept when it comes to an alignment. If I still had my camaro, I'd run max negative camber with max caster if I would redo it again, even for street driving. Not having a correct toe measurement is what kills tires.
If that's still not enough to persuade you though, yes adjustable control arms should achieve the alignment you're looking for. Also elongating your camber/caster slots is also an option. Just be careful on how long you elongate them, don't want to go too far
Hold up, hold up. Before you spend money on parts, find a new shop to align your car. The place you went to is lazy. Zero reason why they can't achieve the specs you gave them. They probably put the car up on the rack, saw that it was in a decent alignment and didn't do much work on it. Having said that, the current alignment is a good mild performance alignment. Negative camber doesn't kill tires as quickly as most think, excessive toe - whether it's in or out - kills tires.
One thing I did before I started doing my own alignments was buy the f-body alignment J-hook tool. It makes it a million times easier to set camber and caster. You can get them through places like summit, made by SPC. Costs around $50 and it makes your techs life much easier, which hopefully gives them time to do the job properly.
I do plan to get a second opinion as I did find it odd that they couldn't get it closer than that. I will say however they spend close to 2 hours on it so I can't say they were lazy.
More than anything I'm worried about my wheel hub/bearings. I little uneven wear on my tires isn't a huge deal to me.
2 hours?? Nice. Yeah I would definitely check another shop out like 79_T/A suggested. By the time they had my car up on the air to the time they dialed in the alignment, it was around 15 minutes. 2 hours seems like they were a little perplexed on how to align these cars to me...
-1 camber isn't going to wear out the hubs. Driving hard is what wears them out Massive sticky tires aids in destroying the front hubs for sure. You gotta pay to play! Looks like you got new hubs in your pictures, are those Moog as well?
Moog is a good brand. SKF gets the highest praise around where I live, not sure why. Moog, SKF, Timken, OEM are the better ones I've heard of. Haven't run any of them, so I can't pick and choose from personal experience, only relaying others experiences.
I know UMI ran Moog hubs on their car with 315 Rival S tires. It lasted them a while IIRC, but didn't end pretty. Granted though, they were driving the car hard repeatedly at events with massive sticky tires
Those specs look ok to me. But if they didn't lift the car and pull the lower arms in to start, you won't get closer to zero (or less negative camber). The car's weight makes it pretty tough to pull the arm in if it's sitting on it's wheels. So let's just make sure that isn't what was happening.
As for the -1.1 to 1.3, that's about stock spec for a Boss 320 Laguna Seca and a Corvette. Given your excellent choice in parts, I suspect handling is key to you. So the camber isn't really out of line for what you'd ideally want.
I'm having a hard time reading this printout. Does this look better? It appears they are closer on caster to even on each side. This was a Goodyear service center close to where I work that has done a decent job with alignments in the past. The one that does the alignments there appears to have an autox car. I did ask to keep the camber closer to -1.0 to -1.3. I was mostly wanting the caster closer together. I have a bit of OCD when it comes to things being even. Their machine indicates it was different than what I was told by the previous shop.
I have to say though so far with the mods and both alignments. It handles amazing. I need to get some real practice in to get more comfortable with it.
Careful, OCD can cause a lot of issues when alignments always vary some rack to rack, and due to the car having a bunch of rubber bushings and all.
That alignment looks really good. Stop worrying! At least up front. That said... your thrust angle is out a bit... out of spec even. The axle is turned to the left, that's why the car has toe out on the LR and toe in on the RR. You fix that with adjustable lower control arms. Though you'll need to realign the car again after. If it drives well enough and you need to get used to things anyway. And it seems you like it and it's very different (and this is where I say *YAY*), then don't think it's critical. It's not.
I am kind of shocked that your OCD didn't catch that though.
Thanks Sam, you are probably right about the OCD. lol
So 2 different shops that I asked to center my rear didn't do it.... Ugh.
I do have UMI adjustable pandhard bar and adjustable rear LCAs. Most everything I got from you I told both shops the alignment the rear and that I had those parts and they didn't do it... I have all new hardware back there too. Should have been fairly easy for them to do.
The PHB isn't really anything they can adjust on a rack as the axle doesn't move, the body does with that. But the thrust angle, that is easy with adjustable arms. But these cars don't have that stock and so nobody assumes. But if you told them, then they should have done it if they were paying attention.
Hi OP .. for what it's worth, I'm OCD to a certain degree (pun intended) ...Just noticed that you are in Woodstock. I am as well. I just got my TA aligned up at Kauffman tire on Town Lake Pwky. I know the alignment guy there as he's a friend of the family. I wasn't looking for anything overly aggressive but he dialed it in exactly as I wanted. I've got -.6 camber/4.8 caster (on both sides) and .03 toe on both sides as well. I'd been looking for a decent alignment guy for a while.
Following this, got all new springs shocks, swaybars, bushings, and hubs. Planning on tearing the entire front end off in the early spring and doing the same thing. Thread looks like a good read when I get some free time later tonight.
10-24-2016, 01:01 PM
Alignment issues 
