No alignment cause im lowered??????

[smufguy]

Okay, i wake up today at 730am and go to HK tires here in NJ to get my alignment done and they tell me to leave it and my dad drops me off at the apartment and seconds later they call me up and tell me they cant do an all wheel alignment cause my car is lowered. I am like, man...... this is buncha BS. My car is in real bad shape when it comes to alignment. It started to show the signs in the last 2 days and its frustrating. Does any of you guys know where to get an alignment for lowered cars? I got goodyear tyers who do wheel alignment and buncha other people around East brunswick area who do. I have to ask them and see if they can do it. If any of you guys know where to get an alignment, please let me know. Thanks a bunch.

[k-roy]

You need to get a camber kit to have a proper alignment. When you lower it the camber gets screwed.
The cheap but effective way is to get the upper control arms/balljoints off a 84-87 Prelude on the front. They are adjustable. Check the Howto on this site. Then on the rear you can do the washer trick, search for that.

[smufguy]

its all been done kroy.i used the 3rd gen lude arms than the 2nd gen,

Anyway, i called up pretty much all the companies close by in the past 10 minutes and they all say they dont do lowered cars but just factory set ups. A Goodyear store would do it for 90 bux.

Okay good news, i called up my uncle and the guy he knows at Tirebahn, would do it for 60 bux. Im good then. I cant wait to get this thing done and over with. Also need to center steering.

[AZmike]

I usually call around and find a place that does caster and camber, not just toe and get a price quote. It's usually no more expensive, you just need to go to the right place. As long as your adjustments can get the spec to what you want there is no reason for a lowered car to be charged more than any other car--it's no harder to work on. I usually wait while they do it to make sure I get the specs that I want. Were you going to let the shop set everything themselves or did you have some alignment settings in mind?

[smufguy]

Here are the results. My car still pulls to the left a little and im gonna call them up again and have a word with them. But the steering chatter is gone, and so is the wheel knock. Its much more controllable, but im still not satisfied.


Left Front

Camber = -1.8 (Actual), -1.8 (Before)
Caster = 1.6 (Actual), 1.6 (before)
Toe = 0.0 (Actual), -0.24 (Before) << in range >>
SAI = 8.3 (Actual), 8.3 (Before)
Included Angle = 6.5 (Actual), 6.5 (Before)

Right Front

Camber = -3.1 (Actual), -3.1(Before)
Caster = 1.4 (Actual), 1.4 (before) << in range >>
Toe = 0.0 (Actual), -0.09(Before) <<in range>>
SAI = 9.8 (Actual), 9.8 (Before)
Included Angle = 6.7 (Actual), 6.7 (Before)

Front

Cross camber = 1.3 (act), 1.4 (Bef)
Cross Caster = 0.2 (act), 0.2 (Bef)
Total Toe = 0 (act), -0.33 (bef) << In range >>
Set Back = 0.06 (act), 0.00 (bef)

Left Rear

Camber = -2.4 (act), -2.4 (Bef)
Toe = -0.02 (act), -0.06 (bef) << in range>>

Right Rear

Camber = -2.1 (act), -2.0 (Bef)
Toe = -0.08 (act), -0.12(bef) << in range >>

Rear

Total Toe = -0.09 (act), -0.18 (Bef) << in range >>
Thrust Angle = 0.03 (act), 0.03 (bef)

Seems like my camber was not corrected at all and caster seems the same too. Weird shit.

[AZmike]

They should have set you caster the same. The difference in caster could be the cause of the pull. Some alignment guys don't know that our caster is adjustable. Did they know that you wanted you front camber set? Did they know how? I get mine aligned at the dealer (best price) and I had to show the tech how to do the camber and caster adjustments since our cars are so old.

[Mike89Accordcom]

You don't need a camber right away, but I'd say within a year of lowering. That's what I did with my Accord. A year after droppin it, I got a front camber kit for it.

[mykwikcoupe]

Ive never heard of a shop that wont do lowered cars. around here theyd go out of business. Oh well there loss. When my cars get lowered the first place i go is the tire shop. Tires are way more expensive then alignment.

[TWOLOUDNPROUD]

I hope this Help's you

[smufguy]

fellas, i do have the prelude arms for camber. THe rear i can manage with the -1 camber. I need to get those guys fix the front right camber. I am gonna call em up and tell em how to adjust it. I dont know where Jim is, but i want to talk to him real quick. He needs to tell me what exactly needs to be corrected.

i called those guys and the service guy had the nerve to tell me that we cant adjust the caster on our 3gs. I told him well dumbass thats why u got the radius rod. And i asked him for the turning radius readouts, but he said it was built into the car. So me wanting what i went for and paid 100 bux for, i printed out 3 pages from the shop manual, driving my ass to them and giving the TECH or god knows why they call him that, these papers so he can look at it and do the job. I wonder who certifies these mofos. God, its just a waste of our time driving to and again to them to get shit fixed.

[AZmike]

You need the caster set the same for both sides. Increasing the caster on both sides might be a good idea if you don't mind a little more steering effort since it will give you some extra camber only when you're turning. I changed my caster from 0.9 to 2.2 (the maximum) and noticed a big difference. The front camber should probably be put around -.5 degrees. I've been running these setting for about 2 years and have even tire wear and good autocross performance.

[DBMaster]

Your negative camber numbers will cause you problems with wear on the inside edges of your front tires. Before I put a camber kit on my car - it's not even lowered - on the front right I had a camber of -1.4 degrees. That was enough to wear off the inside edge of that tire. I would do crosswise rotations every 6K miles, but by 30,000 miles all of my tires were missing the inside edges from being on the front right.

I put on the camber kit, got it pretty near zero camber and the problem has vanished. I only wish I knew how to have fixed this twelve years earlier. Could have saved some bucks on tires.

In other words, do something about those front camber numbers pretty quickly.

[smufguy]

You need the caster set the same for both sides. Increasing the caster on both sides might be a good idea if you don't mind a little more steering effort since it will give you some extra camber only when you're turning. I changed my caster from 0.9 to 2.2 (the maximum) and noticed a big difference. The front camber should probably be put around -.5 degrees. I've been running these setting for about 2 years and have even tire wear and good autocross performance.

i wanted my camber -0.5 too. Actually, i even wrote it down on the sticky note to tell the mechanic to do so. So u set the caster to 2.2 huh? i wanna do it 2.0 and see how it is. or even bump it down to 1.5 but we will ahve to see about it. I need maximum exit speed so i guess -1 on camber would be pushing it even tho its the max. I would like to be in the middle for safety. i might have to add washers in the rear to correct that camber later on, im not too worried about the rear.