oh noes, another alignment thread! (help)

[belize1334]

It seems to me that to mount the camber/caster plate above the strut tower you'd need it to have two seperate parts so that they're still something below (a ring of some sort) for the tower to sit on. The point is that the tower is designed to distribute the load over it's entire circumference, not just on the 3 points where the plate attaches. Besides, the stock insulators rise up through the tower, but the spring hat still attaches below the level of the top of the tower, roughly the same position as a camber plate which just has a more compressed geometry.

 

[atc250r]

If you try to get 2* camber by moving the top strut mount inward (by any means) with the stock diameter springs you WILL run into clearance problems with the spring hitting the inside of the strut tower. Get a pair of camber bolts and adjust it that way. I have the Tein upper mounts on stock diameter springs but I wasn't able to get much negative camber with them, I ended up putting the camber bolts in the upper hole of the bottom mount, adding as much negative camber as that would allow and then I took some of it back out with the Tein plates. I'm at -2.5* right now and the springs are CLOSE to the strut tower at certain steering positions. The addition of that camber made a HUGE improvement in the handling of the car, it flat out sticks to the road around a turn now. I'd say it will easily give a stock Evo or STI a run for its money in the turns.

John

 

Quote:
The point is that the tower is designed to distribute the load over it's entire circumference, not just on the 3 points where the plate attaches.



Plenty of GVR4s and DSMs have been running around for years with camber plates above the tower including mine and I have not read of chronic tower structural failures so it may not be a problem. If you are worried about that, mount the camber plate above the tower and bolt it through a reinforcing plate mounted under the tower. The plate would be annular or ring-shaped with bolt hole pattern matching those on the camber plate and tower. But I think it is unnecessary.
Mike R.

 

[kartorium]

^^^man, i wish I would have known this previously. I am going to do this now. I was thinking about building a reinforcement plate to make it safer, but if people have been running without one I'll try that with some beefy washers or something. This thread turned out to be pretty helpful.

 

[gtluke]

wait, you have the mount above the strut tower? PICS! i keep looking at pictures of the plates and figuring out if i could pull that off or not. awesome!

 

Crap I have to apologize, I misled you. I was in a hurry reading and posting and was sort lulled into incorrectly envisioning the assembly by that picture of the white Mazda. No, no, no our camber plates are normally under the tower. That was stupid, sorry.
But if you do a doubler plate underneath (just a 3/16 inch steel plate, round with a center hole and matching bolt holes), a camber plate on top could work. You would also want shim pads to raise the plate clear of the lip around the opening in the tower. And real Grade 8 bolts properly torqued and locktited. You'll need to do some checking on hood clearances.
Again I apologize for misleading you.
Mike R.

 

[gtluke]

oh no problem. as long as someone is on the same page as me as to what i'm trying to accomplish /ubbthreads/images//graemlins/laugh.gif
i'd like to see how the top spring perch interferes with the strut tower if i do try this, also the problem of not being able to have the strut assembled when putting it in, hopefully i'd be able to assemble the strut while in the car.

 

[atc250r]

Assembling it in the car is gonna be a tough one. Couple that with the lack of clearance between the upper mount/spring and strut tower and it sounds like you're going well past the point of diminishing returns. I'm not worried that much about the upper mount being a problem with the top of the strut tower as much as the mount/spring hitting the inside of the tower when you try to dial in some camber. The other thing is, you're going to have to cut a pretty huge hole where the upper mount will now come through the tower so that you'll have room to move it around and adjust your camber (again, assuming you can clear the inside of the tower). Before you go through all that work, why not measure where in its stroke the shaft of the front struts is at static ride height and then measure the amount of travel available in one of the front struts. At that point you'll know if you're pretty close to being in the center of the stroke at rest and if you're above it then you've got room to lower the shaft a little without running into any of these problems that you think will be a result of the Tein type plates being lower than the stockers. Personally, I don't think its worth the trouble and if you want to come up and take my car for a ride to see the difference the extra camber can make you're always welcome to stop by. We have similar swaybar set ups and the same rear springs as well as urethane bushings so it'll be a pretty apples to apples comparison for you.

John

 

[gtluke]

yeah i think you're right, mounting the mounts on top would be really difficult.
if i'm going to go through that much trouble i'm going to do that dual plate thing. i can even use that opportunity to raise the strut tower an inch too. i've seen some rally cars and drag cars do this.
that R32 rally car had the strut towers raised like 4 inches.

 

[gtluke]

 

[belize1334]

The only issue that I see is that camber plates usually come with studs, not bolts, so they might have to be drilled out to accommodate the new fasteners. Other than that it seems like someone could make a kit that would work with most any set of plates. It would also offer a new height adjustability option since you could use an assortment of shims to lift it by whatever amount you want (within a given range.

 

[gtluke]

the only one's i've ever installed were the ground controls, and they are bolt in.
their site says NOT GALANT but IIRC you just flip the plates over and swap sides and they work.

 

[gtluke]

well i threw my ingalls camber bolts in the bottom holes and turned them all the way negative, i got -1.5 now
i really think this is all i'm going to get, i looked into slotting the strut towers but i'm not really going to gain anymore like john said.
i'm at about -1.25 in the rear also

i ended up having to put my rx7 fd rims on to check my alignment better, those lancer wheels i've had on have no lip on the outside and its really annoying to try and get the alignment gauge to touch the very outer edge of the rim.

just waiting for my girlfriend to get home from getting me food so she can help me set the toe.
our 6 year anniversary ftw /ubbthreads/images//graemlins/laugh.gif
-luke-

 

[atc250r]

You'll probably be pretty impressed with the improved cornering and feel with the camber set up like that.

John

 

[belize1334]

IMHO -1.5* is perfect for street. I run twice as much camber up front as in back (since the rear has dynamic camber) at it makes the car very neutral in the turns. The BIG difference that you'll feel is the turn in though. Unfortunately for autox -1.5* isn't enough and as has been mentioned you can't increase front camber w/o toeing in, which is annoying. I'm gonna go w/ caster bushings soon to see if that gets me to a satisfactory point (with enough caster your camber will increase as you turn the wheel) and if not I'll probably have to go w/ camber plates and just do home alignment for the toe.

I'd like to hear more about the GC camber plates. I know that TEL camber plates supposedly do not fit our cars w/ some minor hacking of the tower holes. Have you found away around this w/ these particular plates? Please elaborate and share pics if you have them.

 

[gtluke]

i installed a set of those on a galant like 5 years ago. i remember reversing sides and flipping the plates upside down. i could be wrong, but i swear they were on a galant. it could be possible that i had to drill another hole, but i can't remember. i'll have to ask nathan.

 

[gtluke]

awesome,got my toe setup to 0
i figure when i do the front with poly bushings i'll set it to 1deg out
hopefully my wheel is straight, thats a bitch to set up in the garage.

 

[jepherz]

galant hole spacing is different than a DSM as well, which is why I don't see how people are just able to swap all this stuff over. Galants have ovaled strut towers w/ the side bolts being 5.5" apart and the front/rear being 6" apart. DSMs are all 5.5".

 

[gtluke]

i don't think it matters since you only use 3 holes.
i know for a fact that i took complete TEL struts with the strut tops out of a awd talon and bolted them in my galant with absolutely no modifications. in fact i had TEL strut tops on my setup until last week when i put the evo strut tops in.

 

[belize1334]

The stock rubber insulators go in no problem because you can just rotate them 90 degrees and it changes nothing. The problem is that if you use camber/caster plates, when you rotate them 90 degrees to use the front 3 bolts you trade camber adjustability for caster adjustability and visa versa. That's fine if you have fully camber/caster adjustable plates, but most are just setup for camber and you'll lose that if you rotate them. Now, maybe you could just get a set of the RRE plates with a fixed caster offset and adjustable camber. Rotating them would give you a fixed camber offset with adjustable caster which you could then max out. You'd gain alot of camber but there'd be no way to change it so you'd still want ingall's bolts to tune and that's exactly what they're NO GOOD for cause eveytime you pull the strut assembly apart you'll have to have your alignment redone.