So after replacing
-Front lower ball joint
-Inner and outer tie rods
-Whiteline Compression Rod bushings
-Whiteline LCA bushings
-Front struts (KYB)

and confirming that the upper control arm rubber bushings and ball joints are still good, I went and got an alignment... Oh oh. First of all, the tech didn't touch the rear because I've got a bad bushing on my EBay camber kit the PO installed many winters ago, which accounts for the inner tire wear I've been getting on the back.

He also told me there was supposed to be a toe bolt installed where the lower control arm (the one with the spring bucket) attaches to the frame (picture 2.)

The front end definitely feels tighter over bumps, but the steering feels a little "dead" on center... like a family car. Tracks nice and straight and feels planted at any speed, but that feeling of responsiveness on center just isn't there. How do my alignment specs look? I'm at stock ride height, and I'd like to optimize my alignment for handling without any crazy adverse affects on tire life.



Here's the sheet:


The next pic is the blown bushing which gives me a little negative camber when the car is sitting. Would this also affect the toe?


Blown bushing on camber kit causing camber wear


Is there supposed to be an adjustment on this bolt?


Any other insights (or links to helpful threads) would be greatly appreciated, as it seems there's a glut of information to sort through and I can't tell what advice is good or not.

EDIT: The other thing to note is that I had my winter 18"s on the front and my front summer 19"s on the rear as I'm trying to wear out the allseason 19's so I can wrap them in summers and figured I'd put the burner tires on the wheels with bad alignment.

 

Yes there is supposed to be an eccentric bolt at there on the lower spring bucket, that is your rear toe adjustment. Also that bushing being shot will cause positive rear toe if it's giving you rear negative camber which is exactly what your alignment report shows.

If you have a dremel tool you can replace the spring bucket toe bolts with the SPC ones, which, if you're lowered you will need in order to get back within spec anyways. If you've never taken that bolt out before then get the rear up on jackstands and use your floor jack to support right below that bolt (probably have to put a little piece of wood on the floor jack, I have a little 1"x1" square piece)then you can take the tension off of it to get the bolt out. I don't recommend just trying to push up on it by hand to do it because it has about 150# of force on it, I've seen people do it that way but it's really hard on the body

You should be able to pick up a set of OEM toe bolts for cheap if you aren't lowered and don't need the SPC ones.

 

Ok, thanks Cleric! The PO actually gave me a few little boxes that looked like they had cams for these bolts in them... told me they weren't needed! I'll check them when I get home. I'm going to pull the ebay camber arms and see if I can find a universal poly bushing to fit in there to fix that.

How does the front look, and what could I do to improve on center steering feel?

 

Actually I think I see exactly what got screwed up....

The aftermarket rear camber arms are supposed to have ECCENTRIC LOCKOUTS which is just a big square washer that replaces the eccentric since all the adjustment can be made at the turnbuckle on that camber arm, I don't know if that bolt on the spring perch is the lockout bolt and they just installed them in the wrong position or not?

If you don't have the lockout bolts and can't find a good deal on them then PM me and we can work something out, I have a few extra sets laying around from various other Z/G projects.

 

I definitely don't have those on my car, the cam on the camber arm is eccentric.... Maybe that's my toe bolt and the two just got swapped? If those are just steel plates I'll just machine a couple at work.

I'll take a look when I get a chance.

 

If you don't have adjustable front upper control arms then there's nothing you can do about front camber unfortunately, typically you want them to set frontal toe at the maximum spec which is 0.04 degree on each side for a total toe-in of 0.08 degree. There was a Nissan FSM that states setting toe at the maximum setting reduces tire feathering so when you go back for the next alignment I would have them change the front. They'll almost definitely have to make frontal changes anyways since you set rear alignment first and it determines the adjustment needed for the front. Since the rear will be getting changed so will the front.

Since your front camber is out you should seriously think about getting adjustable FUCA, they're easy to install, just remove the 3 bolts on the top of the strut mount to drop the strut so you can pull out the 2 bolts on the chassis holding the FUCA in place, use a jack under the steering knuckle to support everything since it's going to want to go out and towards the cabin but it's easily controlled with just your hands there's not a lot of pressure on it but you don't want to strain the brake lines or wheel speed sensors. Having a little bit of rope handy makes life a lot easier, you can tie on to something in the engine bay like the strut tower brace mount then drop the rope through the hole and tie it onto the spring somewhere to keep it in place while you work.

 

Yeah that's what I'm thinking is the two bolts got swapped but I don't see the big lockout washers on the other bolt. Maybe it has an oversized flange? I can't really tell from the picture but the adjustable camber arm usually gets the lockout washer/bolt kit like I posted.

 

What is "good" for front camber?? Right now my front camber is within spec (at least that listed on the sheet). I'd like to get adjustable upper control arms eventually but I'm getting to a point where I need to stop spending money on my car and just drive it... If I were to throw any more $$ at the suspension it would be sway bars, unless this camber issue will cause tire eating.

 

As long as the toe is set properly then they will wear NORMALLY just at a slight angle depending on the camber (which is totally fine).
Here's the specs for alignment, right now I'm set -1 in the front and -0.75 in the rear for camber and I really like the way my coupe feels for standard daily driver duty. Alignment is like anything else, everyone has their preference.

FRONT


-------------------------------------------------------------------------REAR-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I need to check my sheet to ensure I am not over total toe. Thanks man. Best of luck op, but your **** needs cleaned at a minimum. Replace all bad bushings before trying to get an alignment

 

Thanks Cleric, this forum should pay you for all the help and knowledge you share!
I know my suspension is filthy, the PO covered everything, bushings included, in a thick layer grease at some point presumably for rustproofing.... Even though everything on our cars is aluminum. What you see is after cleaning with a rag, but when the weather gets nicer I'll be doing a full degrease, wire brush, then hit everything steel with a fresh coat of rust reformer.

 

If you do end up making your own eccentric lockout washers for the camber arms notice that the bolt hole is slightly off-center, this measurement should help.

 

So I took another quick look through my parts bin and under my car and in fact there are only 3 elliptical washers installed on the camber arm mount. The 4th washer is the part the PO gave me, so at least I have what look to be 4 OEM washers.

The rear lower control arm/bucket doesn't have any lockout at all on it and is held in place by a nut and a bolt....

It looks like I can find a generic Energy poly bushing to replace the shot bushings on the camber arms for around $15/pair, I'll be taking more specific measurements with a pair of calipers and ordering those tonight. Thanks to your measurements, I can get those bolts machined out of aluminum as well... I'll update this thread with how everything goes.

 

I recently got aligned after doing all the suspension work. Sorry to thread jack but to people think this is legit?

 

Well here's the thing, yes it's in the green but the SYMMETRY from left to right is pretty far off. The one thing I ask for when someone is doing alignment is for everything to be symmetrical especially the toe measurements, exact 0.04 on both the left/right front for a total of 0.08, symmetry on camber within 0.01 difference left/right. Rear toe actually has a lot of wiggle room but I usually try to match front toe, again, symmetry side to side and same with rear camber. You have to just play around with the rear measurements to find a good balance of rear toe/camber that is symmetrical on both sides since adjusting one rod/bolt changes BOTH measurements due to the nature of the geometry back there.

Personally I think the rear is more or less ok but I would demand better adjustment on the front, that toe NEEDS to be 0.04 with +/- 0.01 variance, it's really easy to do and doesn't affect camber AT ALL. If you have adjustable FUCA and they left the right side camber that far off then they were just lazy.

Basically, IGNORE the colors and only look at the numbers. Colors are for simpletons who don't understand how to read an alignment report (probably 99.9% of drivers), I think it was done in the past so the technicians could avoid having to spend the proper amount of time needed to get the alignment really dialed in...

Front caster is not an issue so don't worry about it.

EDIT: I strongly recommend finding a body/chassis shop that specializes in alignments and frame straightening and stuff like that to do your alignment, or specialty tuner shops that focus on fast moving vehicles. Those guys will usually charge a little more but will spend the extra time to get your alignment VERY close to perfect. The money you save on tires in the long run is worth the effort, plus not having your car pull that 0.03 to the left (multiplied by the camber difference).