Thread: In need of alignment and so so setup

Hi,

I recently installed K-Sports under my Nx2000 and for the front it seems to work out without problem but the rears show room problems.

I've got 205/40/17 under the car and by setting the K-Sports in default settings, meaning that the wheel hub was matching the surface of the strut tower, the tires hit the spring.

So to make it driveable I had to adjust the rears to max. negative camber. Then I ordered wheelspacers 5mm, I believe those are the thinnest I can get and before they came in I already hitted the wheelwell once, it was showing on the tyre. I hitted the weld, not the wheelwell itself. It was so minor, but with already having max. negative camber, it seemed it won't fit.

So to lessen the negative camber, I've placed the wheelspacers (for the rear, fronts seem still to be fine) And guess what, I touched the wheelwell again but this time quite easily.

As for now, I'm looking for an alignment, but the problems are that should I do that with or without wheelspacers and without I risk the alignment shop tells me this can't be aligned and with the wheelspacers I can be sure it will hit the wheelwell.

Any thoughts on this? I'm looking for the cheap way, trying to avoid throwing away $69 for wheel alignment if I later find out I have to change the settings again.

Please advice, I also would consider DIY alignment solutions but I don't see how I can adjust the car and still read the wheelplate.

Well you should get rid of the 17s first How are you adjusting your camber? With camber and even 0 toe your tires won't wear very well on 17s. I would sell the 17s as soon as you can. Get some 15s, or put the stockers back on

You could remove the wheels, and hammer your "weld line" in the top of the wheel well flat. At the same time roll your fenders.

That would provide you with the maximum room within the wheel well. Hopefully killing the rubbing issues on the wheel well itself.

After that, use the spacers to get your wheels to clear the springs.

Or....buy some smaller performance oriented wheels.

Thank you for the info, I understand getting rid of the 17" is the best way but I'm very happy with them, OZ Volcano's pretty rare. Also spending another $800 is not what I intend to do.

But I didn't think of hammering the weld line, I believe the difference will be so small I don't even need to hammer it flat.

I've got some spacers now and I decided to bring the car to a shop to align it because I don't know the camber and it might be double cost but atleast then I know the camber.

I did notice 17" don't wear very well, that is very true. Any hints on what to tell the alignment shop? I already decided to give it a little more camber, say 150% of what Nissan says but if I can make it wear better that would be great!

I do understand with coil overs it will be a so so alignment, I really have no idea what weighing will cost me but if I want that, it will be later on anyway.

Besides car drives like the weight is then on the front axle then more on the rear axle and it drives not very well, so I'll need an alignment anyway to experiment further with the coilovers, I suppose. It's pretty hard getting this perfect/understand what alignment does .

Dave Coleman (SCC Magazine) did it on his Project Silvia in order to stuff maximum tire into the wheel well. It helped with the rub, and when he did hit the top of the wheelwell it did not damage his tires. The weld line can otherwise cut your tire/tread itself.

I miss SCC magazine in it's prime.

For the street you are not going to want much camber on 17s. If you had a smaller wheel you could get away with it but not in your case. You can have them set your toe at 0 front and back and if they will even try and touch your camber get it set to stock.

I think you have other problems if you have coil overs. The shop won't even mess with that unless you have a race shop with scales. You should try and set the ride height same as stock on all corners with a full tank of gas. check them all once you think you are done drive the car a little and measure again. then lower each corner 1 inch

This is the best advice IMO
A little goes a long way when hammering the welds and rolling the lip.
That is if you are definately not gonna change wheels.

He has other issues going on with his setup that need addressed, it's not just clearance problems.

The car will be aligned tuesday, it's raining and car wants to slide at low speeds in every corner, this is mainly because one wheel has way too much toe, but this was hardly a problem with the standard shockies.

The alignment shop specifically said they want to align the car without wheelspacers, then I can put them back if I want that. I don't see why I wouldn't want the alignment with wheelspacers, but ''my mechanic'' told me to. Also, I am too lazy to rise the car to default height and also don't know what the default height was.

I saw some car pictures and with another car I've owned with yellow Koni's and noticed setting the camber from 0.8 to 1.2 was noticable and I also was very happy with it. I don't know how much extra wear I got back then, because I swap the front and rear wheels on a regular basis.

This are the cars with special settings (and it are special cars too :P) and I want to try to mimic it. Don't try to stop me, I will do it anyway I also admit that my plan doesn't add up with trying to lessen wear. However I don't understand why I should set toe to 0.

Ferrari Dino 206 SP


Ferrari 330P4 Spider


The first car seems to have a lot more positive camber on the front then the rear. The second car looks like it has some positive camber on the front and negative camber on the rear. However, now I look at the picture again I'm not so sure anymore about the rear. I also believe the second car has a ''wider axles'' on the front.

Also, I nicked those 2 pictures from somebody elses post, so for example I don't know whats inside there.

Since I have tested the K-Sports a bit on dry roads with a lot of negative camber on the rear, I've put the wheelspacers on the front. So I got one tiny centimeter more ''longer axles'' This is instantly noticed, WOT on wet road made it go straight a lot better, it steers more effectively in to corners but it also makes my car slide in wet corners a lot more easily, which is kinda dangerous. It's a DD and I like to max. it through certain corners which are ''safe for me and for other people". <- which is stupid ;D

I was thinking of two setups, wheelspacers in front, extra positive camber on the fronts or just the standard camber and that same camber on the rears. Or I try the same with minor negative camber on the rears. If that is a bad idea, please say so. Also, I absolutely won't adjust the settings to fit the wheels under the car. I also take the risk of throwing away $69 and for the tyres that are under the car now, they are so Chinese and very bad (not even round enough, loose air etc. etc) so I also don't worry on the wear I will get. Actually I want to sacrifce them to see if I need to adjust the settings of the guestimate alignment I'm planning.

I also found out the standard settings are just in the FSM:




So from what I can remember what I asked the alignment shop to do for me 10 years ago and a couple of years ago, they just added some positive camber. It was noticable and for the extra wear, this was so minimal, I would get new tyres anyway. Also, for adding camber they said that would need different toe and caster (I have no clue how to set caster on a car) and I told them to just leave those settings original. (Again, I am not listening to good advice, true).

Now I want to ask the alignment shop to align to what I believe will be good.

front:
total camber ( 1 + 0.30 = 1.30)/2 = 0.65 x 150% = -1 (well, almost)

rear:
total camber ( 1.55 + 0.25 = 1.75)/2 = 200% = -1.75 (hmm, maybe a little less?)

By writing all this I notice rear has negative camber just like front camber. For the front I believe that momentum will set the camber different and maybe cornering too?

For the rear, I wonder why it needs negative camber and that -1.55 stated in FSM is already a bit much.

So my 2 plans changed both to a new plan I suppose, maybe better to not to try to mess with negative camber on the rears.

To sum it all up, I start thinking to leave the wheelspacers in the front, if I have to get wheelspacers for the rear, those will be 3mm anyway and the wheel already touches the car sometimes, which could also get worse after alignment but I'll manage to drive to home and start thinking about hammering etc.

I also think its better to get positive camber then negative (positive means wheels = /----\ right, sorry if I messed that one up too).

I can understand if this post will get answers it gonna be hard to answer all my questions, work with my stubornness or even ignorance (of knowledge) but please help me out, this kind of alignments don't work very well in my head and I'm on a budget I rather see not eaten by multiple alignments.

For the toe, if the car after my messing with the setting (it is messing, I can't predict what the result will be, not enough experience) I am sure this will be adjusted for free, because if the car goes left right on high speeds all the time, they know what to do and the company I've chosen warrants a ''no questions asked policy" on alignments.

I think I will work out the camber problem for (driver safety atleast) But I don't know nor understand what the effects will be of leaving the wheelspacers on the fronts with cornering hard. Straight run and response is great but car slides on rainy bents at low speed.

Maybe I need also to adjust settings on the rear to even out the wheelspacer effect of the fronts? I really would like to leave them there, it looks very very good under the fender and besides the sliding it's quite amazing what 1 centimeter can do.

Thank you for your time, just one question of the zillion I posted answered by [Strike]''you people'' (<- if that translated not very kind, I excuse for this, I really don't know how to express better in English)[/Strike] (So I meant to say fellow forummers, duh) would be great.

I'll try to post shorter next time

Wow I cannot believe what you just posted.