hey guys, i just got back from the honda dealership to get an alignment. i put on my omnipower suspension about a week ago and i needed an alignment. anyway, they said they couldn't do it because the car was so low. the only reading i got on the sheet was the left front wheel is -2.7 degrees. how could they not do an alignment? also i asked Just Tires if they could do alignments on lowered cars and they said they could. should i give them a shot? help asap! thanks.

btw i don't have a body kit or anything just a itr lip and i have about half a finger gap all around.

 

Maybe Honda meant too low as in they couldn't get the car onto the alignment rack without scraping? Just a guess.

 

Well on my car with my ITR front lip, I have to take the front bumper and front lower splash shield off in order to allow a clear path side-to-side for the laser. At -2.7 degrees camber it sounds like your car is pretty low, so I wouldn't doubt that they weren't able to get a clear path because your front splash shield and lip were blocking it. Would have been nice if they had told you that was the problem. I do also scrape my sideskirts getting up onto the alignment machine, so that may have been an issue for your car, as well. Some places that say they can do alignments on lowered cars have alignment machines that you just drive straight out onto, with no ramps involved. The floor of the shop has to step down about 3-4 feet around the machine, so most places don't have that.

My car sits like this, those are my ramps I made, with 5 layers of 3/4" plywood at the front edge, and they barely clear under my lip, so it's just under 4" clearance under the sides of my lip:

 

yeah sometimes dealers won't touch the lowered cars, try that 'just tires' place, im sure they will.

 

i know this, with a snap on alignment lift the heads can't see under the body because the heads have to see eachother. on a hunter machine the heads have to see a central location on the info station thats elevated alot higher than the car. theres also the trouble of getting the car on the lift itself. the lift i used to get my car up was a rotary 4 post that sits low but the problem was i was trying snap on alignment heads. so what i have to do is find a shop that has a rotary 4post alignment lift with a hunter alignment machine.

oh yeah, i have no wheel gap, i'm tucking slightly

 

hmm, i'm gonna head down to the shop to see if they can do it. do u guys think i should really invest in a camber kit? since some people say all u have to do it get the toe within factory specs and rotate the tires often i won't really have much of a problem. however, since i have -2.7 neg camber would that be an even bigger issue?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 3.504 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i know this, with a snap on alignment lift the heads can't see under the body because the heads have to see eachother. on a hunter machine the heads have to see a central location on the info station thats elevated alot higher than the car. theres also the trouble of getting the car on the lift itself. the lift i used to get my car up was a rotary 4 post that sits low but the problem was i was trying snap on alignment heads. so what i have to do is find a shop that has a rotary 4post alignment lift with a hunter alignment machine.

oh yeah, i have no wheel gap, i'm tucking slightly</TD></TR></TABLE>

There are different types of Hunter machines with different types of wheel sensors. The one I've always had mine done on is this one, it has wheel sensors with a horizontal leveling bar on each front wheel sensor, that has to see side-to-side w/ the sensor on the other wheel:



If you can see those little pieces that stick up at the ends of the machine in front of the front wheels, my old front bumper used to clear those. Now with my 98+ bumper and ITR lip, the lip doesn't even clear those, so the bumper has to come off before getting on the machine.

Other Hunter machines have sensors that see front-to-back (they have those reflectors w/ the checkerboard pattern on the rear wheel sensors). Those are slightly better than this machine at that Chevy dealer in the above pic.

 

i'll see how it goes tomorrow and see if i need a camber kit if my tires start to wear out quickly or not.

 

Maybe when they said they couldn't align it, they meant they couldn't get it back to OEM Specs. There's no factory front or rear camber adjustment, so your camber is stuck at whatever it is right now. They could probably adjust the toe, but why get it done twice? Just get it all done at the same time ASAP.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by sleeper_teg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">hey guys, i just got back from the honda dealership to get an alignment. i put on my omnipower suspension about a week ago and i needed an alignment. anyway, they said they couldn't do it because the car was so low. the only reading i got on the sheet was the left front wheel is -2.7 degrees. how could they not do an alignment? also i asked Just Tires if they could do alignments on lowered cars and they said they could. should i give them a shot? help asap! thanks.

btw i don't have a body kit or anything just a itr lip and i have about half a finger gap all around.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I work at a Just Tires and some of the shops will do lowered cars while others wont. At our shop just about everyone drives some sort of lowered import. We use some boards to get lowered cars onto our alignment rack and we have yet to get one that wont clear. I am tucking my tire a little bit on 17s and I make it onto the rack fine with the use of the boards.

Any guy who comes into our shop with a lowered car I make sure everything gets dialed in perfectly. Thats just me though... some shops think lowered cars are a pain n the *** and will do a sloppy job.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by DA9 Integra &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Maybe when they said they couldn't align it, they meant they couldn't get it back to OEM Specs. There's no factory front or rear camber adjustment, so your camber is stuck at whatever it is right now. They could probably adjust the toe, but why get it done twice? Just get it all done at the same time ASAP. </TD></TR></TABLE>

You say why get it done twice? Toe is the biggest wearing angle. When your toe settings are way out of spec from lowering a car that is what mainly causes you to eat through your tires. The camber does cause some wear but not as much as toe. I would definitely have them set the toe to keep you from wearing out your tires prematurely. Just Tires warranites our alignments for 6 months 6,000 miles so if a customer who has a lowered car comes in and doesnt have a camber kit then we will set the toe for him/her and have them come back sometime before that 6 month/6,000 miles and we will realign it for free.


Modified by shorto85 at 7:52 PM 1/29/2005

 

that's cool, hopefully everything will go smooth, if not i'm gonna try ntb since they have the however many alignments u need within a year offer thing. either way, i'm gonna adjust my toe first and probably invest in a camber kit if i REALLY need it then just go back for a free alignment.

 

Oops I meant to say get a camber kit for the front and rear ASAP, then get the alignment done. If it's going to be more than a month or so until you get the kits, have the toe aligned, then have it aligned again after you get the kits.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by shorto85 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

You say why get it done twice? Toe is the biggest wearing angle. When your toe settings are way out of spec from lowering a car that is what mainly causes you to eat through your tires. The camber does cause some wear but not as much as toe. I would definitely have them set the toe to keep you from wearing out your tires prematurely. Just Tires warranites our alignments for 6 months 6,000 miles so if a customer who has a lowered car comes in and doesnt have a camber kit then we will set the toe for him/her and have them come back sometime before that 6 month/6,000 miles and we will realign it for free.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

Damn that's a sweet deal, wish there was a place around here like that. I usually like to get my alignment adjusted every 6 months or so, and my friend always did it at the Chevy dealer pictured above, but lately the big-wigs upstairs won't let them do sidework anymore.

 

definitely get a camber kit. first off, -2.7deg driving around town will definitely eat your tires a lot faster, and rotating won't help much. you only have 4 tires, and 2 of them are being eaten. so you can double the life out of rotating, and if you have non-directional tires, you can have the tires removed and put on the wheels with the outside in, so it's like having 8 tires. but in the end you're still going to eat them up quickly. with -2.7, you should try to corner quickly around every corner, so that the outside edge of the tire helps with the cornering load. i found that helped a surprising amount when i used to be lowered. but in the end, for the price of 1 pair of tires you can get a skunk2 or omnipower kit, which is easy to adjust any time, quickly. and for almost nothing you can get a cheap washer kit if you just plan on leaving it lowered and not messing with things.
just remember, trig is your friend. put a level or something next to your rim, and measure the difference between the distance the lip at the top is from the straight edge and the distance to the lip at the bottom-most part of the lip. now take that measurement and put it into your handy calculator.
arcsin (difference divided by rim size) = the camber degree
just remember it's negative if the top is farther from the straightedge than the bottom. boom, instant camber measurements. for just daily driving, 1.5deg is perfect. even wear with decent handling. hope this helps.

 

You can flip the tires on the wheels to get more life with either directional or non-directional tires. However you cannot flip the tires on assymetrical tires, like Azenis or Paradas. I flipped my first set of ES100's (205/50-15) and got somewhere between 35K-40K miles total out of them, with at least -2.5 deg. camber the whole time.

 

Also be sure to check out this article from Team-Integra.

http://www.team-integra.net/se...D=744