New tires installed, new D2 suspension installed. I finally got the car to the height that I want and let the new suspension break in for about 3 weeks. the car drove straight and coasted straight, but for piece of mind I wanted to get it aligned. so I went yesterday and 79$ later.... it coasts straight, but under any acceleration it starts to pull right. not bad at 5% throttle but the more you give it the harder it pulls!! Also look at the camber in the rear. I can almost get 2 fingers between fender and tire so my car shouldn't have any if much camber at all. they didn't even shim/ or use the factory camber adjustments in the rear.. Any thoughts guys????? or does the rear camber look normal, for the height of the car. they didn't give me a print out or anything but for the height of the car I felt like they should be able to get it pretty close to perfect? Thanks in advance!

 

I missed your call yesterday, I'll call you after work. But bring it by the shop tomorrow after work and I'll take a look at it.

 

I had/still have the same pulling issue. Just a suggestion, Google the issue and there is a procedure, it may be on tirerack.com, but basically you move rims and tires around, until the pulling is eliminated or is weakened, and you can narrow it down to which tire is the issue. Not sure if your new tires are directional or not. My pull got weakened after I moved the suspect tire to the rear. Good luck!

EDIT: nevermind, I mis-read your post and thought the pulling was after the new tires, but you said after alignment.

 

People put D2s on ITRs? Whuuuut.

anyway...the camber is going to change when you lower it. Alignment shops don't often shim the control arms and there is no stock camber adjustment. You need to add shims or instruct them to add shims...which adds cost. You can also get an aftermarket camber kit. -2 degrees is still within spec for the rear of a DC2, BTW. Use that as a mental reference.

Has anyone checked air pressure to cure the pulling issue? Get a print out with an alignment. Just because it's going straight doesn't mean it's aligned. Just because it's pulling, it doesn't mean you need an alignment.

try rotating tires front to back or side to side to see if the pull moves or goes away. Do this after you check and adjust tire pressure.

 

I agree with swapping wheels around as a test.

I'll give you some tips based on personal experience. I had a brand new set of Falken 615's years aog to which I got my car aligned as well. Drove from Toronto to New Jersey, then back. Tires in the front were completely bald afterwards. Swapped with rear and it happened again. Thought I fixed that but the cause was 2 fold.

1) Check the bolt for your front lower control arms that bolts it to the subframe and make sure they're tight. These were backed off for me because the welds on the nut on the inside of the subframe broke.

2) Check your wheel bearings. I had a wheel bearing go, without any warning. The bearing has 2 tracks or races on it, I had a problem where the inside of the bearing wore down causing damage to the hub. This could cause an imbalance felt in the steering wheel. I had it steering wheel movement both on braking and acceleration.

 

It's also pretty common to get bad alignments (it's only toe they adjust). Most shops don't regularly calibrate their equipment and they may screw things up worse than when you go in. Accurate OEM alignment specs are as follows for the Type Ar:

Toe Front: 0mm (+/-2mm)
Toe Rear: +2mm-in (+2mm, -1mm)
Camber Front: -.5* (+/- 1*)
Camber Rear: -.75* (+.75*, -1.25*)

Personally I've taken to doing string alignments myself in my garage with .02mm fishing line. I can get with .02mm total toe accuracy with a precision scale (.5mm increments) and a bubble level. That's well within +/- 1mm required for the job. All 4 of my cars run arrow straight.

BTW: You don't really have to worry about camber so much as toe (toe is very fast wearing on tires). If you enjoy lateral G's on the streets (aggressive cornering), a little extra camber form lowering can actually help even out the tire wear. The 3G Integra gains most of it's camber in the front anyways. You typically see around -2* in the front and only -1.5* in the rear (unless you have a bushing or bearing problem).

 

Lets start with the basics first, check your tire pressures.

 

What's does it matter that I'm running D2's??? I was running PIC SELECT and they rode like a bag of ***. These D2's ride great!

Anyways,,, tire pressure is even all the way around, took the car back yesterday and they put it on the alignment machine and showed me the numbers, all were in the green on their machine, left front was -.03 and right was -.04.... Left rear and right rear were -.05. Seem the car did better on the way home though it still pulls a little but way better than the first time. Meh

 

Aren't negative numbers a toe out? A rear should never be less than +.04* each and never more than +.26* each. Toe out in the back of a FWD is not good.

Front seems "good enough" though not great. Especially considering they are almost halfway to limit their of -.08* of toe out.

Here's someones spec sheet I found on google. It illustrates all the limits in degrees rather than mm like the OEM specs state (BTW: Only difference on Type-R is the front camber spec is greater due to lower ride height).

 

Maybe tires need more miles on them, then the problem may just go away?

 

heh, that was from my old alignment sheet from a thread I had made, and I sort of fixed that awful alignment after preloading my suspension, redoing front lca install. Still having minor issues on it to the point I want to start doing my own alignments with the string method. Since it seems I can't seem to hold an alignment despite new front suspension components after autox and the camber/caster values flip flopped.

 

I did notice the right rear of my 94 Civic went out of whack (from .6mm in to 1mm out) in less than a year. I'm starting to wonder if nudging into the curb when backing into parking spaces is puts these rear trailing arms out of whack.

As for consistency, I've noticed that with the strings it's extremely repeatable. If I measure one day, and then check again the next, I get the same exact results (with the car sitting on the same surface). Probably better for back-to-back comparisons vs any shop anywhere. I will say the best part about doing your own alignments is the freedom to work on your suspension without having to worry about paying for (or getting a bogus) alignment. Takes me ~1-2 hours total to do all wheels and I know it's perfect.

http://www.negative-camber.org/jam14...alignment.html

Here is the writeup I used to learn the string thing. They even include an excel spread sheet to convert desired degrees into mm measurements for your specific diameter of rim and string offset. This is important because I found the OEM measurments in the manual (+/-2mm) are sampled at a considerably larger diameter than any wheel. For a 16" rim (measured 17" lip diameter), the +/-2mm spec in the book (that means 1mm toe per wheel) translates to only a 0.6mm difference from the front of the rim to the rear. Not the 1mm you might expect. That means you really need to be pretty spot-on just to get it within spec. I can confidently get it down ~0.1mm accuracy per side via strings.

One thing I add to the technique is sticking a bubble level to my scale for making measurements. This increases accuracy by monitoring the angle at which you hold the scale again and again. I also sit another small level atop the steering wheel once I visually set it perfectly centered. This way I can be sure it stays in the same place throughout the process. And if it doesn't, I can easily put it back to true center at any time (unless your kid comes along and snatches the thing up ).

I also park the front tires on some slippery thick plastic bags with thick shiny cardstock junkmail in them. This helps acts as a slip plate to reduce friction between the tire & floor. Without this, adjustments can feed back to the steering wheel causing to un-center (even with a steering lock device). Always re-check the steering wheel stayed centered after you've got the toe setting you desire.

I also dremeled my metal scale (.5mm increments) to a point at the measuring edge to make it easier to make the contact with the rim a tiny point. This prevents inaccuracy when rocking the scale left to right. Then I covered that tip with rubber cement to keep it from scratching up everything it touched (your wheels).

The tools:

Two cheap bubble levels (check each side for accuracy and mark all good sides) $2 on ebay:


Cheap .5mm precision scale $2 from china:


Steering wheel holder $30 from Amazon:


Day Glow Fishing Wire (.2mm diameter) $6 at sporting goods store


Harbor Freight Long Handle Metric Combo wrench set (includes large sizes required for bigger cars) $24 -20%:


2 jack stands (you should already have these if you work on cars):


Junkmail (free if you have a functioning mailbox):

 

maybe they weren't negative numbers. I didn't receive a print out. they were in green on the pc like the one posted above. don't really like these Michelin pilots too much. we will see just gonna ride it out as long as it doesn't get worse.

 

You said maybe they werent negative numbers... You could be slight positive (toe-in) on L/F and slight negative (toe-out) R/F (still within green) and have a problem. Total Toe is probably one of the most important things to look at. Another thing is cross camber. ON the example align sheet the front camber is in green (all good) but the difference is borderline bad. This camber spec could cause a car to pull right.

Did you try rotating the tires around? Tire pull or Radial pull is a very common problem that many times goes undiagnosed or chucked up to an alignment prob.