i lowered my 91 hatch by 2 inches (not on car yet) and now i need to get one of those camber kits. i was wondering if you only need them for the front or both front and rear?

 

you need an alignment after you put the springs on. you dont need a camber kit for our cars.

 

you sure about that? i lowered my car and it looks like its off-camber. shop i took it to when i got an alighnment told me i was gonna need a kit to fix it.

 

youre not going to get enough negative camber that will matter.

youll get more than enough toe misalignment to wear your tires.

yeah. im sure.

 

k thanks that makes me feel better.

 

Tyson, so you're telling me that negative camber is not a tire-wearing angle, assuming all other angles are close to spec?

I get significantly more mileage from my tires on my vehicles that have the camber set to near zero.

For the record my car sees little more than highway mileage. I agree with you that if you've got negative camber and you're turning quite a bit, you probably won't notice the camber as a wear angle. But in my case, driving nearly full-time in a straight line, having a camber kit has really been of quite a benefit.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tyson &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you need an alignment after you put the springs on. you dont need a camber kit for our cars.</TD></TR></TABLE>
Well many places that do alignments will tell you that they can't work on your car because your car has too much "negative" camber. In this case a camber kit would correct this problem it would also allow for even tire wear. On the other hand having some negative camber can benefit you on the road course when taking those sweeping turns...

 

ymmv.

with normal profile tires on 14-15" wheels, sidewalls will still flex so that the contact patch is still across the tire. the effect of camber is negligible in my experience and those of many others.

hard braking and accelerating, especially burnouts, in a straight line will wear out your tires dependent on camber angle for sure. im certainly not denying that.

the key is that the toe needs more attention than the camber.

the reason also has to do with our cars being double wishbone suspension, and not macpherson strut where camber control is not as good. the advantage of double wishbone is that the camber change is well defined. makes it much less of an issue.

zeroing out the camber when lowered will definately reduce grip in the turns.

and about bringing the car back to "factory spec", whats factory spec when youve brought the ride height out of "factory spec"? at a specific wheel position across the range of motion of the wheel, the camber and toe angles are designed at a certain dynamic range. so now that youve changed the baseline, whats factory spec? the car is not always in the static condition.

 

Tyson, I agree with everything you've said. Many people have proved it time and time again.

I guess the key ingredient here is how we use our cars. I haven't been to a track in years. My EF is a freeway cruiser and doesn't like to take turns

 

After a driving event I was just at yesterday, I am officially DONE with a street alignment on my crx.....as far as camber at least. Lowered 2" is probably between 1.75 to 2 degrees negative camber. The only reason I'd get a camber kit would be to even out camber side-to-side if it is off.