Tibbi

Went to get my alignment today and had had to dial back in my camber. I set the plates to -2 and had the man use the freshly installed camber bolts to "zero" the mechanical camber to almost dead on -2. The problem came when he went to adjust the toe, the inner rods were too long and bottomed out with a few degrees still to go. It looks like I'm going to have to buy some new inner rods and trim them to size. Has anyone else seen this? I measured, and the height from the lip of the fender to the ground is 22 inches on both sides, which is a pretty decent drop. With -2 camber the tires (205/40/17) have a quarter inch of clearance on the fenders; which sounds iffy, but at that camber and with the fenders pulled it takes 2/3 to lock before the tries get anywhere near the fender. Plus I run with the damper set to very low "race only" settings since my commute is mostly curvy back roads. No real worries about rubbing.





Gushing aside, because of the tie rod issue I had to dial camber back a bit to -1.5, but still a tie rod, strangely only on the right side, was too long to allow proper adjustment under the new stance and camber. Oddly enough left side has enough slack in the tie rod to get the toe right on, the left retains almost 3 degrees off toe! The tie rod ends were recently replaced with MEVOTECH# MES3377, but the inner rods are untouched. Unless someone before me replaced one out of spec its kind of odd. I was able to play with it enough to get the angles to work and even out the toe between the 2 sides, but the steering wheel is now off by about 15 degrees. A minor nuisance but it does limit turning at full lock, as one side is very obviously more shallow than the other.



Has anyone else whos dropped their Tib had issues with this? Is it common practice to sheer the tie rods?

In retrospect it's not difficult to understand why the tie rods need to be trimmed, but what would produce such such a heavy variance between them?

SR Tech

3 degrees is ALOT of toe...and that's after adjustment??



Did you replace the control arms? Something has to be bent or the frame has shifted

Tibbi

I've triple checked everything, nothing bent and damn near everything is new. I suspect its the drop because at the last alignment a couple of months ago there was no issue, and that was a minor height reduction. Also when i was watching him adjust camber via the plates, you could watch the the toe visibly dip in an out by a very large degree. I doubt it's anything that major. He and I were both convinced it was the ride height.

SR Tech

I would agree if both sides were equal, but if one side is in and the other is 3 degrees out, maxed... I would say something else is array. Check the rack mounts.



3 degrees is a lot. You sure it wasn't .30 degrees?

Elantra0wner

Someone needs rack spacers!?

wheel_of_steel

I'm having trouble visualising this: mspaint?



If you're hella slammed then minor changes in ride height will cause huge changes in toe because the control arm and tie rod are different lengths.

Tibbi

Yeah, it's pretty low at this point. Not sure of the exact clearance, but event my driveway has to be navigated considerably. I'm pretty sure this is all there is to it. I double checked the paperwork I got with the alignment and it looks like he turned the camber bolts a few extra times. The upper plates are set to 1.5 but the machine read a .5 degree difference between the two, which given the rest of the changes could explain the difference. He had zeroed them when it was at 2, but he did monkey with a lot of settings during the toe debacle and that could have been one of the biggest differences. After the meet tomorrow I'm going to order camber bolts for the rear and a new 2.5" spanner from Megan, since the original broke on me. (I think they make those out of butter and just power coat them to look good.) I'll take it back after the install and lowing the rear some more, then have them reassess it. NTB luckily will realign for free for 6 months. Plus the dude there has a civic also running megans so he's pretty familiar with the setup. Could be an honest mistake given the frustration and amount of work.



But yes, it was 3 degrees, not 0.3. I've found that lowering these really messes with suspension geometry A LOT! And small adjustments in camber once this low make enormous changes in toe. It's insane! Small prices to pay to make this car handle as cool as it looks.





I'm pretty sure that's going to have the opposite effect. I need a shorter tie rod, not longer.

SR Tech

I've lowered and aligned many cars. Just did my wife's cobalt ss. I know that changes in camber can effect toe and caster drastically, and if it was equal on both sides I would agree its all in the ride height. Or maybe it's the machine that your guy is using giving false readings.



The machine I work off of, if the total toe is over 2degrees it won't even give you readings until you get under that threshold.



Are there equal amount of threads on both inner tierods? Could be manufacturing flaws

Tibbi

After tonight I'm fairly convinced it's the mismatching camber. I'm going back in the morning to get that sorted. We'll see how it goes.