Ok I just got my car aligned with having coilovers put on. My front camber is -2 on both sides but my camber plates are way off. The driver side is a few notches past zero but the passenger side and about 7 nothces past zero. I helped the alignment guy hold the wheels while he was tweeking the camber plates and I saw the live reading myself. Is this normal, other than that the alignment is all set, zero toe all around.

 

Your camber plates should have nearly the same settings left and right, otherwise your front roll center is nasty. No real side effects other then your handling will suffer.

You should be fine tuning with the camber bolt.


- andrew

 

It's normal. Some people will tell you its not, in reality you have lots of tolerance stackup in parts and the subframe can also be shifted to one side or the other creating the offset seen in the camber plates.

John

 

Well the ride height on both sides is the same. It actually makes me wonder if the ecentric bolt on the strut mount on one side is opposite the other. I think this actually might be the case of the camber plates being way off. I had a shop install my coilovers and they might have accidentally switched up the sides. Either way the handling is amazing, i've never felt my car handle this good.

 

that was my first thought when you posted this...

How long have you been running without an alignment? I swear I posted in thread of yours about daily driving with coilovers a while back.

 

Mine are about 1/4" off. The alignment is dead on the nuts but the plates are different. However even at only -2.5* there is plenty of room to go either way on the plate.

 

I just got my alignment this past weekend but i've been running without it for only 3 weeks. Robi is actually coming to Chicago so i'm going to have him align my car. It's expensive but i'm sure it's well worth it.

 

Even if one bolt is pointed out and the other is in.... as long as the alignment is right it means nothing.

 

The camber plates being set at very different locations can have some negative effects on roll center location. Front strut angle is a part of determining RC location and having one strut slammed in a lot more then the other is definitely not ideal.


EDIT: not saying your car will self destruct, or even that you'll have really bad tire wear....just that it won't handle as well as having them set equally.


- Andrew

 

^ I'll agree with that to a point... but we are talking about 1/4 difference which really doesn't matter much at all.