Camber Kit Questions

[GTRON]

Hey Guys, I need to get a camber kit ASAP, because I like having tires haha.

I'm looking at two different styles of rear adjustable control arms, these SPC ones (that are like bent down), or these Megan ones that are straight.

I'm leaning towards the Megan arms because I already have the Megan rear toe arms. (I like matching stuff)

Then I'm thing about buying some Ingall adjustable ball joints for the front. I'm wondering, will those correct all of my front camber? 1.5 degrees of adjustability doesn't sound like much.

[Corweena]

SPC is the only right way to go for a rear kit. The straight arms are just asking to bend and snap. There is a reason the OEM arms are curved. Plus, SPC's ball joints are gonna be way better than those on Megan kits.

http://www.hondasociety.com/board/sh...d.php?t=153885



for the front, look at Ingalls anchor bolts. they have 2 kits, with 2 different adjustment ranges. you honestly don't want to put the camber back to 0. keep it negative 1-2 degrees, it really helps with turn in and overall handling feel of the car. Just get the car aligned and have the toe zeroed out. Camber in and of itself doesn't kill tires, its when toe + camber are present that stuff goes bad.

[Raf99]

..... Camber in and of itself doesn't kill tires, its when toe + camber are present that stuff goes bad.

PLEASE STOP THIS BS RIGHT NOW! Stop telling people camber doesn't kill tires. You are correct that camber + toe does the most damage, but you CANNOT say camber does not cause tire wear!

If you are going to say it at least point out which tire specs you would not see significant camber wear on due to the amount of side wall and the tire pressure. In comparison to low profiles tires with small side walls which will not flex and will have more wear.

But even then one will still see more wear than someone with zero camber over a period of time.

If a mod wishes to delete these two last posts, please do.

[GTRON]

I don't know if he meant that camber doesn't kill tires, or if he meant that toe wear can be worse. You'd be pretty dumb not to think that your tires wouldn't wear funny with (excessive) camber.

Anyways, what would be the benefit of using the anchor bolts for the front, versus using adjustable ball joints? I think I would rather do the adjustable anchor bolts, because I don't want to deal with trying to pressing out the ball joints that are in the upper control arms right now.

For the rear control arms, I guess I'll do the "bent" SPC adjustable ones. That does make more sense, now that I think of the oem ones being curved.

EDIT: after seeing how much the adjustable anchor kit is going to cost, I might just stick to adjustable ball joints, LOL.

[deevergote]

Camber does result in uneven tire wear. Camber with toe-in or toe-out will cause significantly faster wear. It IS possible to get most of a tire's usable lifespan with a modest degree of negative camber, as long as your toe is set correctly. However, it's definitely untrue to say that camber doesn't cause uneven wear at all. If you do retain any degree of negative camber (some is good for handling), definitely keep an eye on the inner portions of your tires. Once they're worn, the tires are done. It doesn't matter how much life seems to be left on the rest of the tire.

Anyway, I would avoid Megan. SPC is a legitimate suspension component manufacturer. Megan is just another copycat company. Cheaply made junk. They may be one of the better ones out there, but they remain cheaply made copycat junk. For any component that will cause you to crash if it breaks, you do not want to go cheap.

Anchor bolt and ball joint kits are about the same in terms of function. I prefer the anchor bolt style myself, because I'm not comfortable with the idea of pressing the OEM ball joint out of the factory control arm (Honda even sells the arms and upper joints as a complete unit.) Plenty of people have done it with no issues, but I'd prefer not to do it myself. Anchor bolt kits can be a little more frustrating for your alignment tech, since they involve two adjustable parts per side rather than one. Still, if one of the anchor bolts fails for some reason, the other one might keep you safe enough to get out of harm's way. If a ball joint fails, you lose control.

I had a cheapie anchor bolt kit (Dropzone) fail on me many years ago, before I knew any better. One side broke completely. The other side was hanging on by a sliver. Had that been a ball joint, I'd have plowed into the concrete median from the left-hand lane of a crowded 65mph highwway at rush hour. My car definitely wouldn't have survived. There's a good chance I wouldn't have either! That experience gave me an appreciation for quality parts, and for parts that provide a "backup" of sorts (two parts rather than one...)

[deevergote]

Also, keep in mind that front camber correction will result in the control arm hitting the inner fenderwell. You can either modify the sheet metal (which could be asking for rust...), run some negative camber (if you're not totally slammed, -1 degree would probably do the trick), or raise your car enough that proper camber correction results in no contact.
There is no other way to avoid it.

[GTRON]

I won't be slamming the car, and I'm not scared of running some camber. So I'll get that inner fender well figured out. Speaking of fender wells, I rubbed some parts of my inner fender to bare metal from turning. I have fairly wide wheels, so It's not a shocker.

I think I'm going to go with ball joints due to cost, I'm going to purchase some Ingalls ones, the anchor bolts from them would be twice as much.

As far as Megan goes, I got the toe arms for my back wheels from them, and I was really impressed with the quality of them, super heavy duty feeling. I heard they were Japanese.

[deevergote]

No, Megan's crap is all made in Taiwan or China. The company itself began in California, I believe. The "about" sections on their page have a lot of words, yet don't say a whole lot. (I actually went to web.archive.org to look at previous incarnations of their site... it paints a very different picture!) They now seem to have a Japanese division, or at least a Japanese portion of their website. That adds clout to the company, and people that see that automatically think "this company must be Japanese!" I'm fairly certain that was their intention. In the import tuning world, people often assume that if something comes from Japan, it has to be top quality.

Some of their stuff is alright, I suppose. But I wouldn't trust anything that could cause a crash if it fails. I had a Megan Racing front strut bar that I actually really liked. It was basically a DC Sports knockoff, for a third of the price. I'm not usually a fan of buying knockoff stuff when I should be supporting the original manufacturer, but with something like that... the original manufacturer shouldn't be charging $100+ for a basic 3 piece bar!

Anyway, wherever your paint is damaged on the underside, clean and paint the bare metal to avoid rust. If you get a major rust problem there, your car's days are numbered.

[Corweena]

Sorry for my previous post. 60hr work week with 14 days straight plus my school finals have me a bit loopy, and I didn't fully explain what I was trying to get across.



Yes, camber will kill your tires. Especially excessive camber. BUT, toe wear is significantly much worse in comparison. And when you combine camber and toe, that is a recipe for disaster.

That being said, a little bit of camber isn't anything to worry about, especially if you keep your alignment in check. I've been anywhere from 1.5" to 3" lowered over the last 5 years, and have yet to install a front camber kit. At most, I had about –3 degrees of natural camber up front. I have Ingalls rear arms, but only because I got them virtually free. I would set the rear in the –1.5 to 2 range. The important thing is, every time I changed any suspension components, I would get the car aligned afterwards. Never had any significant wear problems while I did this. The only time I had uneven wear was when I did my front 5 lug conversion, and waited 6 months before doing the rear, and aligning the car. I threw some extra partially worn tires on my wheels for that period too, since I didn't care what happened to them. Try finding a cheap local alignment shop. I found one that will do toe alignment (no camber adjustment) for $40. Honestly not bad at all, and worth spending on every 6 months or so to keep my tire wear in check and not have to spend another $500+.

I say "significant" wear, because yes, there is a minimal amount present. I normally "flip" the tires if they are symmetrical halfway through their life or so. At the end of the day, the outer wear bars somewhat worn down by the time the middle of the tire wear bars start to show, but its never enough to get worn down the the wires or even close to that.


And expanding on what Deev said about adjustable ball joints: (edit: he added it in his next post, god I'm tired) one other issue they have is that because they are adjustable, they are significantly taller than the OEM ones. And, depending on how your car is setup, being taller, they place the angle of the UCA higher, which means it sits farther up in the wheel well. Meaning, when the suspension compresses, you risk the arm smacking up into the shock tower area. I've had friends switch from ball joint kits to anchor bolt kits for this exact reason.


In my opinion, if you're lowered in the 1.5"-2" range, you're totally OK with forgoing the camber kit. I'm lowered 2.5" or so max if I had to guess, and I still don't need them (plus the extra bit of camber does help clear my tires since I like to run pretty beefy setups). Anything more than 2.5in then it would probably definitely be worth getting kits to help compensate for that much of a drop.

[Raf99]

Sorry for my previous post. 60hr work week with 14 days straight plus my school finals have me a bit loopy, and I didn't fully explain what I was trying to get across.



Yes, camber will kill your tires. Especially excessive camber. BUT, toe wear is significantly much worse in comparison. And when you combine camber and toe, that is a recipe for disaster.

That being said, a little bit of camber isn't anything to worry about, especially if you keep your alignment in check. I've been anywhere from 1.5" to 3" lowered over the last 5 years, and have yet to install a front camber kit. At most, I had about –3 degrees of natural camber up front. I have Ingalls rear arms, but only because I got them virtually free. I would set the rear in the –1.5 to 2 range. The important thing is, every time I changed any suspension components, I would get the car aligned afterwards. Never had any significant wear problems while I did this. The only time I had uneven wear was when I did my front 5 lug conversion, and waited 6 months before doing the rear, and aligning the car. I threw some extra partially worn tires on my wheels for that period too, since I didn't care what happened to them. Try finding a cheap local alignment shop. I found one that will do toe alignment (no camber adjustment) for $40. Honestly not bad at all, and worth spending on every 6 months or so to keep my tire wear in check and not have to spend another $500+.

I say "significant" wear, because yes, there is a minimal amount present. I normally "flip" the tires if they are symmetrical halfway through their life or so. At the end of the day, the outer wear bars somewhat worn down by the time the middle of the tire wear bars start to show, but its never enough to get worn down the the wires or even close to that.


And expanding on what Deev said about adjustable ball joints: (edit: he added it in his next post, god I'm tired) one other issue they have is that because they are adjustable, they are significantly taller than the OEM ones. And, depending on how your car is setup, being taller, they place the angle of the UCA higher, which means it sits farther up in the wheel well. Meaning, when the suspension compresses, you risk the arm smacking up into the shock tower area. I've had friends switch from ball joint kits to anchor bolt kits for this exact reason.


In my opinion, if you're lowered in the 1.5"-2" range, you're totally OK with forgoing the camber kit. I'm lowered 2.5" or so max if I had to guess, and I still don't need them (plus the extra bit of camber does help clear my tires since I like to run pretty beefy setups). Anything more than 2.5in then it would probably definitely be worth getting kits to help compensate for that much of a drop.

"I've been anywhere from 1.5" to 3" lowered over the last 5 years........"

Sorry to rant on this, but I hate seeing people giving bad advice. Especially on this topic.

Considering people who lower usually don't use OEM wheels and thus cannot swap tires from side to side (unless they go to a tire place and physically have the tire turned on the rim), still not the best advice. This sounds like you've used a OEM tall sidewall tire that was a multi-directional while having the car lowered which creates a very drastic difference from using a 205/40/XX tire with a stiff sidewall and uni-directional low profile tires.

This is what people don't take into consideration when making camber tire wear claims. Or they simply do not have the experience. Either case, if you are going to give such advice please be precise in giving all relative information.

[GTRON]

I'm glad you guys are clearing this up, but can I get advice on what to do for rear camber kit?

[deevergote]

Spc or ingalls. Either brand is good.

[Corweena]

SPC. Ingalls sadly discontinued their rear kit.

For SPC just make sure to get the curved arm one. If you buy from Summit (who I recommend), its like $110 a side and any order over $100 gets free shipping.

[Corweena]

"I've been anywhere from 1.5" to 3" lowered over the last 5 years........"

Sorry to rant on this, but I hate seeing people giving bad advice. Especially on this topic.

Considering people who lower usually don't use OEM wheels and thus cannot swap tires from side to side (unless they go to a tire place and physically have the tire turned on the rim), still not the best advice. This sounds like you've used a OEM tall sidewall tire that was a multi-directional while having the car lowered which creates a very drastic difference from using a 205/40/XX tire with a stiff sidewall and uni-directional low profile tires.

This is what people don't take into consideration when making camber tire wear claims. Or they simply do not have the experience. Either case, if you are going to give such advice please be precise in giving all relative information.

I've used both asymmetrical and symmetrical tires on both stock wheels and my 17s. Asymmetrical tires obviously have a labeled "outside" and thus can only be run one way generally won't last as long because of this. I have a pair of Continental Extreme Contact DWs that are like this. They are my spare tires because of this, if I get a flat, regardless of the corner I can throw the wheel on without issue.

I stick mostly to more performance oriented tires, a majority of which are symmetrical and thus you can flip them inside out. Obviously not all, but it seem more are than not. While its not a deciding factor in choosing a tire, it is a nice benefit.

I use terms like "flip" because its a pretty common reference to having a shop flip the tire around.....this is all stuff I picked it up years ago when researching everything myself, and over the years 90% + of people I talk to that have questions are aware of most of the terminology already. The OP has a good number of posts, and has been here a good minute so sorry if I assumed something.

[Raf99]

I've used both asymmetrical and symmetrical tires on both stock wheels and my 17s. Asymmetrical tires obviously have a labeled "outside" and thus can only be run one way generally won't last as long because of this. I have a pair of Continental Extreme Contact DWs that are like this. They are my spare tires because of this, if I get a flat, regardless of the corner I can throw the wheel on without issue.

I stick mostly to more performance oriented tires, a majority of which are symmetrical and thus you can flip them inside out. Obviously not all, but it seem more are than not. While its not a deciding factor in choosing a tire, it is a nice benefit.

I use terms like "flip" because its a pretty common reference to having a shop flip the tire around.....this is all stuff I picked it up years ago when researching everything myself, and over the years 90% + of people I talk to that have questions are aware of most of the terminology already. The OP has a good number of posts, and has been here a good minute so sorry if I assumed something.

Crazy! I had Continental Extreme Contact DWS for my Acura last summer and I had the most horrible experience ever! Had a garage put them on and the car pulled to the right.... , so had an alignment. Still pulls to the right.
Went to Acura and they did a road force balance on the tires and determined the front passenger had "radial pull". (when a sidewall of a tire is not done properly and causes the tire to pull one way). The shop who sold me the tires did not have a road force balance machine.

- replaced tire. same issue. went to shop they said must be the car
- went to Acura, confirmed same issue
- went back to shop. they confirmed by putting tire on the other side and on another rim (car now pulls the other way). replaced tire
- *!*! - Still happened!! Now the shop doesn't want anything to do with me and is fed-up. I went to Acura again and provided the same results.

- Finally the shop replaced both front tires. Issue was gone.

Now I give credit for the shop holding their word and replacing these tires. Sucks that they don't have a road force balance machine. For weeks i read online about these tires being amazing which is why I bought them. But add "radial pull" to your google search and there are a lot of people who have this issue.