Ok, the guys at NTB have told me that we do not have adjustable casters on our car. Thus you cannot fix it if the car is fading to the right or left... Is this bull, or are they telling the truth? I find it hard to believe that if our caster is thrown off there is nothing we can do about it.

 

Caster has nothing to do with the car pulling to the left or right. That is mostly with Toe and a little bit with Camber. Caster affects how stable the car is at speeds and how stable it is when it goes over bumps.

Camber looking at wheel from of car: / or | or \
Caster looking at shock/strut assembly in relation to the ground from side of car: / or | or \
Toe looking at wheel from top of the car: / or | or \

You are correct in that case, we can't adjust camber unless we have camber plates installed. Toe can be corrected to a certain degree...usually enough to correct the addition of lowering springs and aftermarket wheels. Caster usually doesn't need to be adjusted in a street car.

 

shamoo im sorry but you are exactly wrong..

caster places one wheel behind or infront of the other which leads to the pulling..

no hondas stock are not castor adjustaBLE. a good alignment shop can make your car go straight regardless..

or get some z10 bars and dial in the castor..

where are you getting an NTB in texas to look at a lowered car?

toe will go striaght regardles.. your steering wheel may not be straight but the car will find the center and go striaght..

it will follow the road hard core if it is too far toe out or way too far toe in..

camber is camber.. and is a good thing until you combined it with toe out and then your running through tires ...

 

Most of the NTB's here in Austin will do the alignment. Just I had to pay a little extra for a "difficult" alignment but they had no qualms about performing it.

 

Camber = bad thing... Not a good thing.. even if there is no "toe" involved... camber not only looks stupid.. but its a bitch on your axils.. Letting the camber get out of hand = you spinning off the road and dying as your beautiful integra burns to nothing more than a smoldering pile of rubble... And all you wanted to do was race

 

This kid knows more than houston. Camber will eat your suspension in the long run, especially if you do any kind of rough-road driving or lots of twisties. Imagine your control arms like straight lines...cambering you wheels (positive or negative for you noobs out there) creates a point similar to a fulcrum on one or both of the arms, resulting in distortion and, eventually, your *** being handed to you by a pothole while you're cruising at 50 clicks. Camber's a good thing, eh Houston? Tell that to the guys running 19 inch blades with 300 dollar tires. Do you like replacing your rubbers every four months out of necessity? I sure don't. It is further exacerbated by toe, yes, but it doesn't take toe of any kind to rape your tires. Make sure you get that straight so you don't make the mistake on your ride that you're walking the originator of this post into.

 

Oh I know camber is bad... A guy rear ended me, no cosmetic damage at all, and unknowingly it bumped my camber out of whack. A negative camber cost me over $500 bucks (2 new front tires, 2 front camber kits, and an alignment). I was just making sure that if our cars pull to the right or left that something can be done about it.

 

Goddamn I wish I still lived in Texas. Ohio blows my ***.

 

Where did you live? Its starting to get hot down here... got up to near 90. Ohio is sounding kinda nice in that respect.

 

Alright let's see if I can clear some of this up. Negative camber is good up to a point. A negative camber angle of about -1.5 deg. in front can drastically improve handling. As long as you keep the toe reading in check and rotate your tires often, your tires should be fine. As for caster, for one it is not adjustable on our cars. If the caster readings are out of spec then that means you have suspension damage. Caster plates are meant for cars with McPherson struts, which our cars do not have. To tell you the truth, I don't know how caster would be adjusted on cars w/ double wishbone suspension, aside from the aforementioned traction bars. Even then, the caster change that comes w/ the Z10 bars are only because the bushings in the suspension allow some amount of play in the A-arms. Another thing is that the Z10 bars move the bottom of the supsension forward or back for a change in caster. Caster plates on other cars move the top of the strut forward or back, so that the wheels are still directly across from each other, but the tops of the struts are not (unless you move them both the same amount, which you should). The best way to see this is to watch any Mercedes car as it goes into or out of a parking space. The front struts on M-B's are tilted back at a relatively extreme angle, at least 10 degrees. When the front wheels turn, the inside wheel looks like it's tilting outward, while the outside wheel looks like it's tilting inward, since the steering axis is tilted backwards. I'm not sure why Benzes are like this, except that a caster angle away from straight up 0 can help point the car straight ahead and keep the steering centered. Hopefully this clears up some confusion and doesn't create any more.


[Modified by PatrickGSR94, 12:02 AM 4/9/2002]

 

Camber - how far off from vertical your wheel is. If the top's tilted inwards that's negative camber, positive is the opposite.

Toe - when the steering's at center, where the wheel is actually pointed

Caster - how far the wheel is from the axle line, front-to-back in the car.

On cars with McPherson struts (sorry, not Integras) the camber and caster can both be adjusted by moving the upper mounting point of the strut i.e. with a camber/caster plate. To adjust camber in a double wishbone setup you need to either modify the mounting of the stock upper A-arms to move them farther away from the body or you need to get adjustable-length A-arms.

Caster isn't really adjustable in a double-wishbone design. If you take the Z10 radius arms as an example, you can adjust the preload in them to play with caster. This basically pushes back on the LCA and since there's slop in the stock bushings the caster changes. Stock, there is no way to adjust caster. Not even on the cars which came stock with radius arms (90-93 tegs, 88-91 civics and crx's). If you have a caster problem you've got bent control arms or bushings that are shot to hell. In the rear since we have trailing arms caster is fixed unless the bushings or arms are busted up.


[Modified by MrFatBooty, 6:53 AM 4/9/2002]

 

Yep, pretty much what I said, I think

Actually I just saw another post here that showed a piece from K-MAC suspension (Australian company I think?) that allows both camber and caster adjustments for Hondas. Basically it allows the upper A-arm ball joint to be moved in or out, forward or backward.

 

If that guy's so smart, how come he can't spell "AXLE"??????

Camber doesn't eat suspension, it eats tires and can break CV joints.

Negative camber is a good thing to a point. Around 1-2 degrees is fine, anything more, and you'd better have the scrill available for some new tires.

Hardcore auto-x'ers use around 2 degrees of negative camber to help stability in cornering. Most street cars don't need more than 1 degree of negative camber.

 

I get an uneasy feel in the steering after I changed the drivers side axle on my Teg here in NYC, I am on stock rims but have 2 new 15" tires on the front and 2 older ones on the back, I have no idea why the steering is so eery but it gives me the creeps, I've gone from being completely confident in pushing her hard to having a nervous twitch. Hell I've even thought about replacing the axle's in the front again. The replacement axle was an abs axle and I dont have abs, I was told it's just a ring removal to make it compatible, was that true???