If i install Hotchkis springs would these camber bolts be sufficient? Or would I need anything at all other than an alignment?

http://www.z1auto.com/prodmore.asp?m...ng&prodid=1479

 

save your money and buy a full tein suspension.. its worth its weight in gold..

 

i don't like tein at all. my buddy had tein flex on his evo and it rode like ****. when i go with full coil-overs i'll prolly get jic's from rre, which i won't be getting for about a year. but in the mean time until i can afford them i'd like to get a better stance for my car, hence the springs. i hate the gaps i have in my fenders.

 

I put on Eibach sport line springs.It lowered the ride very nice.I`ve had them on for a year awesome ride for $175.00.I had $1800.00 HKS coil overs on my last ride and these are comparible.

 

How much do the Hotchkiss springs drop the car? If @ 1" you won't need any camber correction bolts. There was enough adjustment in the factory susp for my eibachs.

 

did you use camber plates with your springs or did you just get an alignment after installing the springs?

 

rule #1- don't get info on such critical things from the internet. people here know nothing, NOTHING, except what they see other dweebs spouting about online, which eventually passes for common knowledge. very, very few exceptions to this rule. and yes, i include myself in this statement.

rule #2- find a competition-level alignment shop to work with. you're in cinci, for gods sake. not out in the sticks somewhere. you have access to more chassis know-how than you will ever find here. find your local autocrossers or other mosports types and find out where they have chassis work done. you will discover that there are a select few shops around you that are considered to be the tops in the field there. call them, find out what they know about your car, if they've worked on evo's already. in my experience, they probably have. try to talk to all of them for at least a few minutes to get a feel for them. find a shop that you feel comfortable with, who sounds like they know how to achive what you want, and then:

*listen to them*.

most of these places have a chassis specialist, a guy for whom this is his career- who aligns and balances highly prepped, competitive cars to exact tolerances all day, every day. he knows more than you can ever hope to learn. he is your new crew chief. let him know what you want from your setup, and listen closely to everything he says. he'll have his own brands he knows and trusts, that's ok. he'll have his own ideas on alignment specs, that's ok. he'll have his own ideas on how to improve the car, many of which probably don't coincide exactly with what you find "everyone knows" here on evom. who do you trust to know more?

in my admittedly worthless opinion, we all bought extremely high-performance cars, which require a higher level of understanding than you can find any general-purpose alignment shop, let alone here the land of tooning-knowledge-by-commitee.

that said, my worthless opinions on your specific question are:

you don't need camber plates for anything other than pretty extreme camber settings, stock adjustment is plenty for normal adjustment of a moderate drop (which the hotchkis springs are). while experimenting, i've gotten up to -1.8f and -1.5r with the stock eccentric bolts. i only installed camber plates up front to get more than that (-2.5).

i don't recommend listening to people who suggest you'd be better off buying low-end coilovers than high-quality springs (sounds like you already know that).

and as much as z1 has a generally good rep here, i also don't agree with much of the info on that page- drilling your stock struts to install a part you don't need? ugh. don't do that. go to camber plates when you decide you need more adjusment.

oh- one more reason for plates: it is easier to adjust camber accurately with the plates than with eccentric bolts, stock or otherwise. if you are going to fiddle with settings, this is nice.

but don't take my word for it, talk to your new crew chief.

 

thanx for the info. i called and talked to a local alignment shop here in cincy. the guy running the place seems to have a lot of experience with performance cars. he felt that i didn't need camber plates for my car with the hotchkis springs. i told him that i currently don't auto-x and that i was just looking for a better stance for my car until i can afford a good coil-over set-up. here is a link to his shop....

http://www.performance-alignment.com/experience.htm

 

to geminix3!! Way to put it all into perspective.
Gotta love it

 

scherejs,

Why you think you need camber plate when you install the drop spring?

You only want to have camber plate when you need to dial-in more (negative) camber than the factory camber bolt allow (max out ~ -1.5 to -1.7)

If you are worry about uneven tires wear after install drop spring......all you need to do is set the TOE at zero (or as close as possible). Some ppl often misunderstand and thinking excessive camber is the cause of uneven tire wear.....the real problem is the toe setting.

 

right, but on some cars, the stock struts don't have enough camber adjustment to set camber properly after dropping it (my old eclipse had none!). that product page on the Z1 site made it sounds like these are needed, so i can see the guys confusion. i think we've got him straightened out now.

i've found about .1 deg toe in to be better with front tire wear, incidentally. common knowledge on evoM says 0deg, but i chewed up my insides pretty quick when i tried it. my crew chief giggled when i said i wanted to try it. he gave me what i asked for, though. when came in for new tires 7500 miles later, i did it his way, with just a hair of toe-in, and even more aggressive front camber (-2.5d instead of -1.5d) it's been flawless, wearing evenly all across the tire.

YMMV. don't listen to us, talk to your crew chief.

scherejs, looks like this guy has plenty of competition experience, which is nice. he's probably worth checking out. you're not looking for much at this point, so it's probably not worth wasting a lot of time on springs and basic alignment. as long as he can get camber to match within a couple of hundredths of a degree side to side, he'll be able to do what you need.

before investing much further, though, i'd still try to attend a local autocross (they're easy to find on scca.com) and get second opinions from people there. even if you're not interested in competing, you're going to find out a lot by talking to people who do. they spend a lot of time and money on chassis tuning, they know which shops do good work. call a couple up, get a few different opinions.

i just think this stuff is pretty important. and everything that passes for law around here is, for the most part, garbage.