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Toe "impossible to set" with camber out by 1/4 degree. Is this true?
Need feedback from those more knowledgeable than myself on this matter.
Long story short I got the car running. It's got aftermarket K-member and a-arms. took it to a local shop to get aligned. According to the shop, the alignment was good EXCEPT for the Camber, which they said was out of tol by about 1/4 of a degree. To me that sounds ok. In their defense, this is because the front A-arm bolt cannot slide all the way in because it's bumping the k-member. It's something I can figure out later...
I pulled the car out this afternoon on my lunch break and this is what I'm seeing. Both of these pictures were taken without moving the wheel (which is off by about 20 degrees). It's very clear that the toe on the driver side is off. I called the shop and they said "It is impossible to get the toe right with the camber off". Is this true? My understanding is that the toe should be set relative to the opposite wheel or at least account for its position. Am I way off here?
B.S. the toe doesn't know or care what the camber is, unless you have an insane amount of negative camber that pushes the wheel so far out that the outter tie rod end doesnt have enough threads to properly adjust, but that is unlikely. I set to zero toe with over 3* negative camber no problem, and yours only being 1/4 of a degree is nothing. The pics look bad, but its hard to get perspective unless the camera is square to the rear wheels. Either way, find another shop.
im at one degree negative camber and i adjusted toe just fine. with my machine you set the steering wheel straight lock it in and then adjust each tire to achieve desired measurement. find another shop. they probably just didnt want to mess with it.
Did they give you a print out after the alignment? I have done the alignment on my own car and I don't know what would make them say that. The only time you can't adjust the toe is when you run out of adjustment and that just won't happen with a normal alignment. I have 2 deg camber and 7 deg of caster and toe can be adjusted spot on. Not sure how they could screw it up that badly.
Update on issue: Needed new hardware to properly torque down all the aftermarket parts correctly. Alignment is good.
In fairness, I believe the car was probably in alignment when it came off the machine, but by the time I called them back to tell them it was not everything had already shifted. It did not help that the person I was speaking with was not the person who actually knew how to properly align the car and worked on it. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and the techs took care of it.
Eric - It's worth noting that nowhere in my instructions did it say I would need different hardware with a new torque requirement. This may have already been taken care of since I bought my turbo K-member about 2 years ago, but if not it would be helpful to future customers
We always recommends using new hardware with our turbo k-members, especially with tubular lower arms. I will not even sell our k-member and lowers together without the hardware. The factory bolts do not hold the torque load and do not provide enough clamping force on the arm, so it will let them slip. You can get away with it on stock arms, but tubulars are a must
10-30-2018, 01:55 PM
Toe "impossible to set" with camber out by 1/4 degree. Is this true? 
