Why do you guys care that much about (negative) camber? Toe is what hurts tire life and negative camber isn't a bad thing.

 

Bad toe WITH lots of neg camber is the problem.

 

Toe will tear through tires faster, but camber does a pretty good job as well. I have about -2* right now. Yes...the handling is unbelievable which I'm enjoying. However, I'm also going through $1200 worth of tires every 15K. Enough negative camber(I would say anything over 1*?) will absolutely wear your tires.

You are correct though at least in that if the toe is out of whack, you won't get much more than 4-6K out of your tires.

 

Try 1-2K miles. The toe on my Maxima was out of spec. It completely chewed through a brand new set of front tires in about 1500 miles. This car was on stock springs/shocks so the camber was close to 0 degrees.

OTOH, 2 degrees of negative camber only wore out the rear tires on my other cars after about 12K miles. This was w/o flipping the tires. If I did, I could have probably gotten 15K+ miles out of the tires.

 

Great post, Bfranks...

Any before and after pics of the car with the Eibachs that you can post?!? Come on... We all want to see what it looks like!!

 

@Soundmike: I ended up using Firestone. I'm about to put coils on, so I figure a lifetime alignment might come in handy while I tweak the ride height .

Well, this was interesting. I noticed that at -2.2 rear camber I was clearing the fender by quite a bit, so I took it back to Firestone to have them readjust it. We were able to adjust it all the way down to -1.0 and still clear the fender. It's close, so I'll probably take it back and have them add a few tenths negative camber, but even then it will still be in spec. I find it very odd that at -1.8 I was rubbing, but in spec is fine. I've seen others mention that putting a camber kit on raised the vehicle a little, but I honestly don't see how (maybe someone could explain that). Right now that's my only guess as to why pre camber kit I was rubbing at -1.8, and now I'm fine at -1.0.

I was trying to wait for the weather to clear up so I could detail it before posting pics, but it's not looking like it's going to happen anytime soon.....so here you go.

 

i was wondering about that...i also want to lower my car but how much does it affect the shock when you just use a lower spring

 

Or...what happens if you only lower the front? I've been thinking about the excessive front gap, but never minded the stock rear gap. Wonder how it would ride after just lowering the fronts with those springs.

 

Different spring rates will make the car a bit unpredictable, but I honestly couldn't tell you how bad it would be.

 

I have had my 350Z springs on exactly one year and I just noticed that my sport shock are leaking oil. Time for some D-specs.

 

Thank you. Would you mind telling me what their rates were? I found a couple of local shops but they were charging shop rates. Worst-case i'll probably just do it myself.

Did you end up selling the Eibach's to the other interested party?

 

I had a local shop install the camber kit, since they were the ones that offered to do the alignment for free since they couldn't get it in spec when I had the Eibachs put on. They charged me 1.5 hours labor. In hind sight, I wish I had done it myself. It's not that hard, and they totally ignored my request on the alignment specs. Basically my "free alignment" turned out to not be so free....

The Firestone shop charges $139 for a lifetime alignment, then they gave me $30 off that price. They had no issues with coilovers or specific camber toe specs, so it's a pretty good deal.

I'm still on the Eibachs, so I haven't sold them yet. Hoping to get the JIC coilovers on after the first of the year. Even then, I'm not sure if I'll be selling them. I honestly thought it would be easier to find someone willing to sell me their stock springs so I could put it back to stock down the road if needed. So until I can find a set, I'm probably going to hang onto the Eibachs.

 

Dude, your camber is perfect. I'd say for best street handling, you want between 1.5 and 1.75 degrees negative camber anyways.

Does the OP attachment only show the before. I couldn't quite find the after, it seems before and actual are the same?

 

DO NOT DO THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the caps mean I really mean it. I've done this temporarily to troubleshoot another issue i had and is not good at all. either leave it stock or drop all 4.

 

Do explain yourself? Although for best handling you'll want to drop all four, but I'm not sure you're CAPS'ing is necessary.

I find that when lowering sedans (that have usable backseats), often they become unusable when you have 4+ passengers plus luggage. In my Maxima I was forced to change my suspension setup due to this. I had a 2" drop in the front, and with 2.25" in the back the car was essentially a two seater. I went and put a 1" drop in the back and thought the car looked awesome. It was raked nicely. I drove it and raced it like that for 60k plus miles.

Now the Maxima was FWD and the G35 is RWD. Lowering the front may offset the weight a little bit, but I doubt it's noticeable.

My Maxima had the front dropped 1.25" more than the back. Since the Prokit for the G35 is roughly a 1.3" drop or so it's basically the same effect: