When I first purchased my car it pulled slightly to the right, but only on the freeway. Took it to get an alignment, and they told me that they could not correct it because my car is too low and I need upper control arms with caster adjustment. Now when I got my coilovers installed, and put at the same height the car was before, another alignment was recommended, and the car drives straight! Now I have these adjustable upper control arms from Z1, Is it worth it to still install? what would I gain by putting on the upper control arms with caster adjustment when the ones I have now are fine?

 

The Z1 doesn't have caster adjustment. Are you sure you don't mean CAMBER ?

 

"Z1 Motorsports Adjustable Front Upper Control Arms feature an offset ball joint location in order to deliver an optimal caster increase." maybe you can't adjust then, they come with a preset positive angle? good thing I didnt end up needing them to correct alignment. but would I gain amything by throwing these on? no wonder the other ones were so damn expensive....

 

Ahhh never noticed that before in the description, I have those installed on my car. You will gain brand new urethane bushings, the stock OEM rubber FUCarm bushings and upper ball joint are some of the main parts to go out on the OEM suspension so it would probably be worth it to throw the Z1 arms on since you already have them. It's -really- easy to install btw, just loosen the 3 strut tower bolts so you can drop the spring down a little to get one of the bolts out because you cannot just fight them out.

Also, Z1 ships those things with Loctite red 271, don't use that loctite on the jam nuts you have to use a torch to heat them off in the future. Instead use blue 243/242, I've emailed them in the past about why they insist on permanent loctite but never got a straight answer from them, it's not the proper loctite for the application since you will realistically be loosening the jam nuts in the future when you replace the ball joint that will inevitably wear out or for other potential camber changes to the front.

 

gotcha, thanks for the quick feedback and heads up on the loctite. when you put yours on did you notice an improvement in ride quality?

 

Well I replaced practically the entire front end, only thing I didn't do were the wheel bearings which were fine so yeah I felt a pretty massive improvement lol. Make sure remove the bushings and grease them heavily including the SIDES of the urethane bushings where they attach at the body, I had to remove mine TWICE because of squeaking before I finally got them quiet.

 

Yes FUCA are needed to dial out natural camber gained by lowering the car. With certain designs you can also get a lot of negative camber, but the threaded ones like Z1 don't have that option. Caster is very rarely touched for our cars on the street, since all it really does is effect the alignment once the suspension is under compression (technically it also helps center the steering wheel when leaving a corner).