Short version:
I use flying miata hub stands and am setting up the rear.
The alignment was at zero toe and about 1.5* of camber
I realized an alignment shop ruined all four alignment bolts (camber, toe) so replaced with OEM pieces.
I set all bolts to zero (line straight up, in the center) and got:
Camber: 2.75* L, 2.5* R
Adjusted camber bolts all the way out and BARELY got 1.8-1.9* camber. It's maxed out and I can not get any less. WTF??

After setting camber, Toe: 64 4/16" front, 63 1/16" rear. That's over an inch of toe out. WTF?? I can't possibly dial that out. Is it because I have the lower control arms all the way in to reduce the camber as much as possible?

Now.. I'm tired and hungry so my thought process is dead (which is why I quit), but this isn't rocket science. The camber and toe were fine before I swapped out the bolts. The shorter bolts were placed on the toe arms and the longer went to the lower control arms.

I swapped the other two hub stands out and got about the same measurement. What in hell am I missing? The car aligned just fine before, all I did was swap bolts. Ride height is exactly the same.

Sorry to keep posting in the Motorsports forum, but I don't want to have to filter through a bunch of random, useless posts.

 

motorsports forum is where your going to get the logical answers and not stancenation fanboys haha.

The camber and toe are connected to each other. So as you adjust one youll affect the other. Unfortunately if your using factory stuff its a bit hard to get both how you want it and you need to find a compromise between the 2.

I have aftermarket camber arms myself but i cant adjust them that far because it starts to make my toe do weird stuff. I dont think its possible to do so but you havnt got the bolts around the wrong way or anything obvious like that?

out of curiousity why are u wanting to run such little camber?

 

I found the problem!

I was stacking two, 3mm spacers to bring the hub stands above the centering ring on the hub (to zero out the camber). Not a big deal ,but I only torque the hub stands down to 20ish ftlbs.
They were allowing movement of the stands and showing false camber. Once I put the car down, I actually had positive camber.

 

Hey, at least your shop didnt put your camber bolts on the wrong way. they were different orientation and direction on each side. I think they put each half moon bolt on a different way for all 4 bolts. If you dont mind me asking, what is the orientation that you run the camber bolts in the front? I cannot remember how i had them before now

Checking the arrows on the bolts they all face different directions too. For more camber from the upright I have to have both bolts facing in correct? sorry for the thread hijack kaj

 

Toe bolts have the nuts facing the back, camber have nuts facing forward, per FSM, assuming I read it right.
😂

 

Thank you, rears are now set up properly. Now I got to fix the front camber bolts too.

 

No worries! From what I can tell, it doesn't really matter which way the bolts face other than making the nuts easier to access.

 

Yea doesnt matter if the front bolts face forward or back. generally u want the nut on the back edge so if the nut falls off the bolt has a chance of staying in place and not falling out till u realise theres an issue.

Interesting note on the front camber bolts. camber bolt should be the upper bolt obviously. and theres an arrow on the head of the bolt. one way is i believe 2deg camber and the other is 1deg? or 1deg 0 deg cnt remember. but the bolt arrow inwards is more camber from memory.