supermansdx

my ek civic hatch is lowered 2.5" front and 2.25" rear, with front and rear camber kits, when i get it aligned are there any certain specs to stay within? or just factory specs? thanks B

rehaf

Is this a daily driver? What is your main purpose for the car? If it's your dd then I would keep it close to stock specs. You can run the front & rear camber a degree or two negative if you keep the toe spot on. I'm sure some others here can suggest specs for you if you want to do some kind of racing.

thumper64

For DD, toe should be 0 or you'll eat tires up. Keep a degree or two of negative camber, it won't hurt your tires like a lot of people say it will. Plus, you can cheap out on not getting a camber kit and benefit from improved handling.

supermansdx

the car is strictly a daily driver, no racing.

Vindicator9000

That is right. Zero toe unless you like buying tires. You can adjust it to positively affect handling slightly, but it's not worth the tire wear on anything but a track car, and even then it's arguable.

I'd say you can have up to 2-2.25 degrees negative camber without any major tire wear issues. I've had 2.25 on mine for 6 months now with no noticeable camber wear.

Also, camber does positively affect cornering in a significant way. If you have zero camber, then when you go into a hard corner, the suspension loads up on the outside wheel, then bows inward slightly, causing you to actually have POSITIVE camber on a hard corner. Which is bad for cornering.

Ideally, if you have a small amount of negative camber to begin with, then in a hard corner, the suspension will move towards zero camber, and the tire will have a full contact patch and more grip.

To illustrate, here's a picture of my car coming out of a hard right-hander, setting up for a hard left hander:


You can see that the suspension is almost fully loaded. In this case, the right wheel is the inside, left is outside. The outside wheel, which is fully loaded, is sitting at almost exactly zero camber with a full contact patch. The inside wheel, which is unloaded and almost in the air, is at about 2.4 degrees of camber. When the car's sitting flat, it's actually 2.2 degrees, but since the suspension is unloaded on that side, it goes out a bit more.

The reason this is good is because you get a full contact patch on the outside wheels, which gives you more total grip. On a stock (or even most lowered) honda suspension, you'll be unloading the inside wheel anyway, so contact patch doesn't matter so much there.

I wouldn't personally play with more camber than that on a DD, but 2-2.5, or even a bit more is fine.

supermansdx

thanks for all your help.

thumper64

If you're lowered enough to get 2.5", you may want to consider other aspects of your suspension and car in itself besides just suspension angles. Consider extended tophats to get a little more suspension travel, consider the roads you drive on and the risk of scraping or denting things on the bottom of your car (I just bought an oil pan because mine was all banged up). Also, think about your ball joints. A lowered car will cause the joints to be at more extreme angles than normal and may wear different. Your bushings will now be twisted constantly. This can cause premature failure...

Anything modified requires at least a certain level of extra attention.

eskimo10

Good info boys, my question now is how do you get a car aligned without a camber kit? I went in today to get my car aligned and he couldn't get the alignment arms on my tires due to the camber. Would it just be easier to get a camber kit, fix it and then have them align it?

alphalanos

how low is your car. it must be pretty low no to be able to clamp the reflectors onto the wheel, if theyre the kind im thinking of. you might need to raise the car a little and/or get a front camber kit. Or you could DIY string alignment to get the toe correct.

eskimo10

Ok well my next question is, if i raise the car enough to get it aligned, then drop it again won't my alignment be all screwed up again?? So pretty much my best bet is to get a camber kit, make the wheels perfectly straight up and down and then align it.

rehaf

Most alignment machines (whether they use sensor heads or reflectors) have many adapters to accomodate almost any wheel/tire/suspension situation. We have a Hunter machine where I work and I've yet to come accross a car I couldn't get the sensors on. Sometimes it's easy for a tech to say it can't be done when in fact it actually can with a little more effort. You may need to take your car to a performance shop where they're accustomed to doing *not stock* cars.