I'll be dropping my car soon on Z S-techs. I'll be buying an SPC rear camber kit, but one thing that I've been wondering about is the front camber kit.

I've done my research and spoken to a few people about this and seen a lot of mixed results.

There is the group of people who don't run the camber kit or they run a lot of camber, but run at 0 toe with camber in the ranges of -2.5 to -3.5 and apparently have decent treadwear without much issues.

Then there's the people who'll encourage you to the end to go for the camber kit and get everything back into spec (which for whatever reason tire wear still sucks in spec anyway).

I will be planning on a camber kit eventually, but if I don't need it now and if it won't be extremely detrimental, then that would just be very convenient for the time being.

What are your thoughts?

 

Your camber kits will eventually (over several sets of tires) pay for themselves since you'll be lengthening the life of your tires.

But yes, out of spec toe > out of spec camber in terms of killing tread life.

It's not a terrible deal if you don't have the funds for front camber kits right now.

 

That's what I'm thinking. I just really wanna go ahead and lower it and by the time I get my next alignment I should have the front camber kit. I was just hoping that it wouldn't be too big of a deal without it for the time being.

Then again I wanna see what everybody says cause I don't want this to end up being a mistake once I do lower it without the front camber kit.

 

I don't think you'll need a camber kit with S-techs, but I bought SPC camber kits to get the camber to be what I want it to be.

 

If you are dumped enough, having camber adjustment can actually give you more toe adjustment too. But if you're just throwing on some lowering springs, you should be fine with just a rear toe kit.

 

The fronts are more giving than the rears toe adjustment wise. I had -5.5 camber up front and my toe was set to 0. Even with the rears you can have your toe set to 0, no matter how much camber you have. Problem is, in order to run to arms you need a true coilover setup (where the spring is on the shock in the rear) since the spring bucket is the toe arm.

 

Being a rear wheel drive car, you need 2° toe in on the rears so they straighten out to 0 when you give it some gas for stability. For front wheel drives, you want the toe in on the front wheels for the same reason.

 

Mine was set up differently since I was running so much negative camber. It followed the road more but yielded more tire life. I would get a good 8k miles before flipping.

 

So basically I should run 0 toe up front and very slight toe-in in the rear? How much would 2° toe be in MM?


That sounds pretty good for the amount of camber you had. The wear was decently even throughout the tire?

One of the issues I have now at factory height is just the inner block of the tire would wear down and the middle to outside is untouched.



I'm just wondering would would be the most ideal setting for toe, considering the amount of natural camber. Should the fronts be set to EXACTLY at 0 toe? Same goes for the rear as if I'm not sure if it should be on 0 on point, or maybe go like .03 toe in.

 

Here's a picture of the basic dilema I'm having right now.

The pic on the right is basically what I'm dealing with right now in factory specs, the shoulders wear and the middle-outside is completely untouched. I basically had about -1 camber up front and -1.7 in the rear with some toe in around .06 at the time.

The pic on the left is a tire at -4 camber. I'm gonna ask him if his toe was at 0 or not. Should I basically just disregard the whole "factory specs" thing because 0 toe is out of spec on the machine.

Because I'm lowering and not running the front kit for a while, I just want to make sure that 0 toe is what will keep my tires from being eaten.

 

is a rear toe kit nec or can they adjust the toe without it?

 

I'm pretty sure you will probably need the rear kit if you're dropping more than 1". Don't think the factory toe has a lot of range to play with if I remember correctly.

 

It wasn't even because the outer part wasn't even touching the ground. I probably had 1/2 to 3/4 of contact patch of the tire.

 

just a story on toe in the rear. I was driving in the rain with my toe at 1.9/2.1 camber in the rear and the whole rear of the car was wanting to drift back and forth. scared the crap out of me. i just found in my previous experience that running that much toe in the rear seems a bit unsafe. Im sure it didnt help that my rear tires are low on tread. its fine if you are someplace that does not get that much rain but in IL its just not fun.

 

More like the width of a bicycle tire of contact patch on the ground! lol