OK... so i've fixed my camber issue (ingalls kit and notched wheel wells)... but the day afterwards my inner CV joint on the pass side blew up... so, i took it to a local shop to have a new axle put in on that side and to have it aligned...

the first time that i took it to get aligned there (about a month ago for my camber problem) everything (toe, caster) was in the green except for the camber...

now, the guy tells me that after fixing the axle, caster on that side is way out of wack and unadjustable... he said that it could never be right because it is lowered... but last time i brought it in toe and caster was in spec... so another guy there said that i could have bent something when the cv joint went, or when i put in the coilover kit...

now, does that sound feasible? and what might i have bent?

anyone with this kind of experience... please, i need help

thanks

 

you shouldn't have bent anything when the joint blew. maybe a tie rod has been bent? by the shop or yourself when u installed the camber kit. can you see the caster or is it not obvious?

 

My caster was way way out of whack when my (upper) control arms were on the wrong sides. I don't know if you have to remove control arm when you replace axles, but I would guess you do. I believe my caster was 5 in one direction instead of the other, as my memory serves recalling my alignment sheets. Take a look...you may able to tell just by looking if they are on wrong...if not, I might get a look at my car tonnight and see if the ball joint is frontward or backward.

Other than that, I would only be left with bent stuff to think about.

One thing that has crossed my mind is if you are looking at just one side of a car's camber kit and each side of THAT is adjusted differently....that would affect camber, I would thinik.

 

Ok, just to add some to my last post, I looked and my ball joints are definatly towards the rear of the car. That is the way the arm is shaped, if you know what I mean.
my caster went from -5.8 left and -5.64 right to 2.2 left and 2.04 right.

the range is between +2 and +4 caster on both sides according to this alignment sheet he gave me.

hope that helps, tell me how your control arms are configured, I'm curious (ball joing-front, back [ward])

 

i guess that we will have to clarify what you mean by control arm...
A-arm? the top arm with the bushing pressed into the end of it, that anchors on either side of the strut in the engine compartment? if that's what you are talking about, the large radi of the ball joints face my motor on both sides... if not please clarify...
thanks

 

woah, I'll try again.

It sounds like you know what the upper control arm is. It is the A-arm thing you described. The thing that happened to me is that they ended up on the wrong sides of the car. Left arm on the right side and the right arm on the left side. See?

They should be labeled, but you can tell by the basic shape of the arm.
Here is a diagram I made before.
BTW, this picture is from the top.

The points I have arrows to are the ball joints. They are a flex point between that vertical piece that attaches to the outside of the control arm and the control arm itself. When you take a look at them, you can see that the arm isn't symmetrical. This ball joint is set either backward or foreward depending upon whether you have your arms on right or not.

Your car should look like figure A where the ball joints are more rearward.

If this still doesn't make sense, keep asking. I gotta do something with my countless of hours worth of knowledge from reading my shop manual and asking/reading.

 

well, see here's the thing...
only one of the axles blew... so they only had the pass. side of the car apart... they couldn't have switched the control arms because they only had one off...
one of the guys said that maybe a rod got bent...
if it was a tie rod(steering) that was bent, toe would be messed up...
so the only rod that might mess up caster that i can think of would be the radius arm that connects to the lower arm right behind the damper fork.

but, also if you loosen the anchor bolts for the camber kit (which if you don't know already, is just two adjustable ball joints that replace both the ball joints on the upper control arm and connect it to either side of the strut tower via anchor bolts) you can move the top of the control arm... but will that affect caster? i kinda dont think so, but what do you think?

 

Ok I don't know too much about camber kits yet, but I can tell you for sure that you don't have to remove the control arm to get an axle out. You have to take the castle nut off of the lower ball joint, take the main nut off the axle, bash the **** out of the lower arm so the ball joint pops, and then pull the axle...so I can't see the arms being on the wrong side. my .02

 

what is the stock caster any ways?and couldent u ad washers to the radious rods to fix it?

 

Weird. I guess my helpfulness has been lost from this point on. Just a few more things...
Here is an actual ball joint. Is this what you have as your camber kit? It is a type of camber kit, but I'm afraid I might have confused you in my descriptions.

ball joint camber kit above

Here is the type I bet you have...

there you can see the part that would be replaced. It doesn't look exactly like yours, but is the goldish piece with the yellow bushings the piece you had replaced?

I was wondering what would happen if you had one of these second types of kits and accidently adjusted one side of your control arm differently than the other. Is that possible and would it cause this kind of camber abnormality?

 

well that makes sense, i'm 99.9% positive that the control arms aren't on the wrong side, cause like you said, you don't even have to take that off to chance the axle... plus they only did that one side and you can't put just one on backwards...

HOW DO YOU ADJUST CASTER?

 

I agree now that the control arms probably didn't get switched. To my knowledge, caster is the angle at which the wheel turns from side to side. So you can imagine just spining a wheel on the ground. That would be a straight up-and-down axis-0*. What happens when with caster is the steering pivots on a different axis. Kind of like how a motorcycle wheel pivots and doesn't have a straight up-and-down fork on the front.

As far as I know, the upper A-arms and now the radius rods when I think about it are the things that would mainly control caster. This rod might be a good thing to inspect. Adding washers might also be a good fix.

Lucky you, you have one good side to look at and compare to. Do it.

Best of luck to you.

 

yeah, i've got the bottom type... originally my camber was like -3deg. on one side and -3.5deg. on the other... and i knew that the kits only had +3deg. max. adjustment in them so i pulled them both all the way out hoping for zero until i got the alignment done... so i don't know if they actually adjusted the camber or not, i would assume that they did...

i'm probibly just gonna take the car to a "front end shop" that specializes in that work and just say, "look, see how far out it is, and tell me why... is something bent? twisted? backwards? and how do i fix it?"

Hey, thanks for your help, if you figure anything out go ahead and post it... i'll check back in a little while

 

caster isn't factory adjustable to my knowledge. My first approach would be to find what is wrong. As I said in my last post that you haven't read when I started writing this one, the washers adjusting the length of the radius rod sounds like a good idea, but I've never really seen how that works to know if it would indeed.

Another way is with those adjustable ball joints. They are expensive, and hard to install depending on who you talk to.

It would probably be more economical to just replace the radius rod if that is what it turns out to be.

 

first lets define caster
Caster Angle=* The angle between the steering axis and the vertical. It is considered positive when the steering axis is inclined rearward (in the,upward direction) and negative when the steering axis is inclined forward
Ok, what does this really mean? if you could draw a line from the top ball joint through the bottom ball joint all the to the ground that is your steering axis. compare that to vertical and you have the angle called caster. leaning toward the back of the car is postive and toward the front is negative.
so, how did it get "messed up" just by installing a camber kit? easy. the ingalls camber kit doesn't just allow movementof the upper control arm straight in or out. if you had not noticed you can also move the upper ball joint(the arm)forward or backward by angleing the upper control arm. the amount you can move it is small but the angles that we are talking about are small too. an alignment tech that is famialr with these types of suspension mods should be able to get camber and caster in spec. there isn't a "factory adjustment" for most of our cars but the camber kitscan be adjusted to add or subtract a small amount of caster too.

 

thanks for the answers. I was wondering myself.