Need help with camber adjusting.

[nickkalen]

I just purchased some camber kits for my 96 eclipse fwd for the front and rear. what is the best possible solution in figureing the amount of an angle to adjust. is there an easy way in figuring out the degree? And not having to trial and erroring it all the time. If there is a web site some one might know about that may answer my quetions I would greatly appreciate that. Thanks

[Gsx_hooptie]

To get it right, get an alignment done before-hand, they'll tell you how off you are. Even guys who are good can only eyeball it within half a degree. That's not good enough if you're trying to get to neutral camber.

Get the alignment before, then afterwards. Don't bother with them adjusting toe until the second alignment.

Extra basic info: I'm assuming you're correcting camber from a lowering. Right now you have negative camber, and you're trying to get zero camber.

[gthompson97]

when i lowered my car, i put in the camber kits and took it to get all 4 wheels aligned. they did an excellent job and it's still perfect as we speak.

[kjewer1]

You definitely dont want zero camber. Some negative camber is required. I believe 2g stock settings were approximately 1 degree in front, and 2 degrees in the rear, but its been a long time since I looked. I prefered about 3 degrees in the rear anyway.

[Gsx_hooptie]

Via sticky on tuners and calling Sears to check:

"2G FWD Front
Camber: -0.8° to +0.2°
Caster: 3.2° to 6.2°
Toe: -0.06” to 0.06” each side Total Toe: -0.12” to 0.12”"

Part of the idea of lowering the car is to turn better. You lower the center of gravity, and you gain negative camber. The camber has to be equal on the left and right sides, there's a little less negative camber run in the rear. If you want to hit factory specs, try and get close to the numbers above. If you really do want to turn better, take advantage of some of the negative camber you gained, and don't get rid of it all. That might mean you don't even need the front camber kit, but read on...

One to one and a half negative degrees of front camber, and a little less negative camber in the rear is fine for the street. This is your static camber. 2gs gain camber during a turn, too, called dynamic camber, so our alignments don't need lots of static negative camber. The exception to all of this is track cars.

Adding a bit of negative camber won't kill your tires, since it is still working with the grain of the tire, if you can picture that. Changing the camber means changing the toe, though, which works against the grain of the tire. Toe makes the tire go "side ways" and drag itself along. So, get the camber where you want it, then get an alignment after you're done monkeying with it so that they can adjust toe. With SALA suspension, all they can adjust is toe. That's why we have camber kits.

If your front camber is equal, and you're not running a big drop, most people let it slide and forget about it. The only reasons you'd buy the front camber kit are; you have a large drop and need to remove some of the negative camber, you're hardcore and you want to add negative camber, your springs are funky/some other good reason and you need to match right and left camber, you're neurotic about getting the exact about of camber you want, or you want to reduce almost all of the negative camber to get back to stock spec's. I was assuming the last, or that you didn't know you didn't necessarilly need one. Installation instructions are on vfaq, btw.

Again, I'm saying less rear negative camber for turns, than front negative camber. Kevin says different, and he's good about sharing. Three degrees is a lot, especially on a quarter mile strip. I don't know why you'd need static camber-- wouldn't you want the largest tire patch possible for traction?

My first post was weak. If I do it, anyone is welcome to call me on it. Or this post, for that matter