camber kit... needed or not??

hi I was wondering if you peeps can help me out with a question I have... is a camber kit is needed in our cars when we lower them??? The reason I ask is because when I lowered my 96 I got a camber kit and it was not touched when I did the alignment... my 96 had regular lowering springs... I also lowered my 94 with coils and got a camber kit... still they did not touch it... if I don’t need it I’m not going to get this time… so please let me know… also if I get coil-over springs and adjust it after alignment will I have to get a new alignment each time??? Thx for your time,Lo

uh, yeah if u alter the right height u alter ALL of the alignment angles. however, u might not alter them enough to NEED an alignment adjustment. as for the camber kit, again, not always needed, but not a bad idea.

Anytime I get my car algined...I ask to see the before ands afdter spec sheet. I know of cases with friends where they have had to ask a place to put it back on the rack because they had got lazy and not adjusted the things they should have, I.E still not algined 100% righ, I know of cases where they've gotten lazy with the toe and cases where they have gotten with the camber and not adjusted it when it should have. Not all aglinment guys are created eqaul. It's always a good idea to look at the before and after specs.

thx for the reply... i did look at what is what under the whell whell and mark the camber kit... all the alingment jobs i have done has been good... for example my 96 i bought it 3 years ago. the 1st thing i did was lowered it with sprint srpings and progressive camber. i was eager to know how the cambe kit will be moved so i marked it... but nothing was move and my alingment has been good ever since. the tires are even i checked them almost once ever week... but this time im going to go without and camber kit... but hey thx for imput... LO

If the alingment isn't too bad off you can skip the camber kit and simply get your tires rotated about every time you change the oil. It's still a good idea to get a camber kit though. I suggest the Skunk2 kit, it has a comlpete upper control arm setup.

If the alingment isn't too bad off you can skip the camber kit and simply get your tires rotated about every time you change the oil. It's still a good idea to get a camber kit though. I suggest the Skunk2 kit, it has a comlpete upper control arm setup.

thats alot of tire rotation! i would just go with the chamber kit.

If I didn't have a camber kit my tires would be shredded. I definatly have needed my camber kit...I wouldn't have tires left if I didn't have one...3 years of driving woudl have really screwed my tires up otherwise. Gets tweaked every time I get it algined.

If you lower you car without one, look at the alginment specs once you algin it...how close to being out or how close to the max limit are they? If it's too close to the max limit, I'd put a camber kit on to bring it back towards the middle of the spectrum more.

I lowered my car 2 inches and I had severe tire wear. I did the washer trick for the rear and installed skunk2 for the front. I adjust the camber myself, and have figured out how to adjust them accurately. Here are a couple links, with the first one being the best.
Camber1 (http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/t16284.html)
camber2 (http://home.earthlink.net/~civicex95/rearcamber.html)
camber3 (http://www.hondaswap.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=36766)
I now get about 35k to 40k on a set of 205/40-16 Kumho's
enjoy! :icon16:

thats alot of tire rotation! i would just go with the chamber kit.

u'r actually supposed to rotate them every 5k for the first 15k, every 7.5k for the next 15k, then every 10k for the rest of their life. so it really isn't all that much more frequent if u think about it.

That seems a bit strange with that kind of sequence. Where did you find that information? How many miles do you get on your tires? 30K maybe 40k on low profiles? If so, then you would save yourself only one tire rotation and a little bit of confusion keeping track.

The more you rotate the tires the less chance your tires have to get in a bad wear pattern i work for goodyear and we ahve been told that you shouldnt go over 5000 mile between rotations but rotating them early like every oil change will not hurt them,but in regards to the original question if your camber is severly out no matter how much oyu rotate the tires its not going to help so the best thing to do is to check the alignment and see how far it is out and go from there....

Almost passed out from the lack of oxygen in that last post. :smile:
On goodyears web site, they say between 6k to 8k is the length of time between tire rotations. Is that the same goodyear you work for or is that a different division / company?

well okay let me refrase that at the location that i work at we recommend no more than every 5000 miles. sorry for not being clear, what i was pretty much trying to say is that from me and my companys experiance its good to rotate more often so the tires dont develop an irregular wear pattern.... soory im to lazy to use periods at end of sentences...lol

i recommend any kid that comes into honda (where i work) to have an alignment first to see if a camber kit is needed. most of the time, its not. 75% in a civic its not the camber causing the problem its the toe so you align the toe and there you go. now of course there is times when you still will need the camber kit. honda civics can handle something like 3degress of negative camber before wearing the tires.

Ouch on the reference about kids. On the front I had a negative 1.1 on one wheel and 0.9 on the other. I am surprised that you say negative 3 is ok and you work at a Honda shop. In the shop manual, specs say plus or minus 1 for the front. I was starting to have tire wear on the inside, even though the toe was set within specifications. I could only imagine what 3 degrees would look like. Any car can handle any degree of toe, camber, caster; it is the wheels that suffer from the mis-alignment. Correct me if I am wrong, but power steering would be the only mechanical issue that would have any wear and tear. Another result of bad camber is a harder ride. Since I now have 0 degrees camber, I am using the entire tire surface which = a smoother ride. :smokin:

Ouch on the reference about kids. On the front I had a negative 1.1 on one wheel and 0.9 on the other. I am surprised that you say negative 3 is ok and you work at a Honda shop. In the shop manual, specs say plus or minus 1 for the front. I was starting to have tire wear on the inside, even though the toe was set within specifications. I could only imagine what 3 degrees would look like. Any car can handle any degree of toe, camber, caster; it is the wheels that suffer from the mis-alignment. Correct me if I am wrong, but power steering would be the only mechanical issue that would have any wear and tear. Another result of bad camber is a harder ride. Since I now have 0 degrees camber, I am using the entire tire surface which = a smoother ride. :smokin:

Sorry about the "kid" comment. But usually the people i talk to about this at work are 16-18old kids with cut springs wondering why they are running through so many tires.
as for your -3degree comment, you are right about that spec, i was typing fast and in a hurry so i input it Wrong. your tire wear, i am sticking to my toe comment. 75% of the time, misaligned toe will cause more tire wear then camber. i have seen the proof on a number of occasions, maybe not true for your particular case but alot of the time its true. :smile:

It's all good :smile: I will agree, toe does play a huge part. In my opinion, 90% of tire wear. To get the other 10%, camber is the final touch. Of course no matter how good the alignment is, the biggest wear on tires are burnouts.