Installed my lowering springs and struts on Sunday and I'm not able to get to the alignment shop until next Monday. Will driving the car around for a week with a messed up alignment do anything bad to the car or wear the tires out alot?

 

If the alignment looks close, you probably won't do too much damage in a week. If you can tell it's WAY off just by eyeballing it, adjust it.

 

Long term alignment issue can cause premature and uneven tire wear and sometimes weird handling charteristics since alingment effects things like turning and straight line stability these are the primary concerns when doing struts and springs but like stocker says it shouldn't do anything to adverse over the course of a week as long as you are not driving hundreds of miles a day.

 

From my personnal experience i don't think it should do any bad... I've driven for like 4 months before doing an alignment after getting my lowering springs and struts installed! It sure that i've seen a difference after getting it aligned but still you should'nt worry about it since it's only for 3 days lol

 

I have never been able to tell by just eyeballing it. That works on a humvee, but you cannot look at our cars and see if it's aligned properly. The wheels do not give you a good point of reference to be able to tell the difference between 1 degree.

You should not drive with your suspension messed up. You'll be the guy constantly correcting your vehicle and you'll get bald areas on your tires. Also, if you've just done suspension modifications, you won't feel any sort of benefit until you get it properly aligned. a 1/2 degree difference is all it takes to roll practically forever or just 1/2 of a block.

 

well being that there is no camber adjustment on our vehicles anyway, you cant mess it up THAT bad to the point that your gonna scrub a tire off in a half hour

when i did mine on the j2 the camber was like -.4 of a degree out the toe was out a 1/4 inch or something like that

couldve probably drove a year before i noticed any wierd tire wear

just slotted out the strut, locktited the bolt and called it good

 

Camber kits are cheap, and an absolute must on a lowered vehicle. http://www.google.com/m/products?oe=UTF-8&...mp;ved=0CBYQrQQ

They make your car roll better and lengthen the life of your tires. I installed mine when I lowered my vehicle. Then I drove to firestone where they align it for no extra charge.

 

you dont absolutely HAVE to buy the camber bolts, you can always just slot the strut like i did takes 2 minutes with a die grinder

but

they are cheap enough to buy

 

+1 for camber bolts. But I am assuming you are going to a reputable shop to get it aligned properly and they will more then likely have them on hand or a supplier that does to get it perfect. Plus if you ever want to autocross your car an alignment is absolutely critical in order to ensure you are getting the maximum performance out of your car.

 

Every Hyundai suspension I've had apart I've aligned myself. I just eyeball it. First of all, get as much negative camber as you can if you haven't slotted anything and don't have camber bolts. That'll almost 100% of the time get you within acceptable specs. I've had a few people take their car in after I put it together that way and when the alignment was checked it was between perfect and 0.3 degrees negative of stock camber spec.

The Tib is still on my eyeball alignment...I think for about 20k miles now. I'm gonna do camber bolts though so that I can set it up with more negative camber, roll the fender lips and install some spacers to push the wheels out a bit more. I'll get a real alignment then.