Cobb springs and alignment

[GhostMercury]

So after installing my springs the alignment place is telling me my strut towers need to be notched so they can fix the toe or whatever. What kind of bs is that. has anyone else had this problem. I'm going to loosen the bolts and then pull on the spring and see if i can get it to move any

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

WTF? (uhm)

You did say in another post that your drop was surprisingly low, could that have something to do with it? You didn't leave any pieces out did you? (kidding)

Why would they have to notch the towers for toe? I could maybe see caster or camber, but not toe.

 

[SPEEDYHANS]

from my experience toe is when the wheel are pointing at each other and can be fixed by adjusting the tie rod ether u must mien camber,or the guy is a idiot,or they trying to take ur money but look into it

 

[GhostMercury]

i might be saying the wrong thing it might not be toe. but its the adjust,ent that suposedly can't be adjusted the tires are like this / / if you were looking at the front of the car. but not that extreme

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

i might be saying the wrong thing it might not be toe. but its the adjust,ent that suposedly can't be adjusted the tires are like this / / if you were looking at the front of the car. but not that extreme

Both tires are off in the same direction? I begin to suspect that either something went horribly wrong during your installation, or you already had a problem with your suspension and just weren't aware of it. Forget notching, you need to get that thing looked at by a suspension/steering system expert.

 

[GhostMercury]

well its only 1.5 on one side and .5 on the other. so i think maybe i need to realign the top 3 bolts and make sure they are perfectly strait.

 

[bacarl]

/ / from the front of the car is camber. / / from the top of the car would be toe.

When you put the two dashes, do you mean that's what the two tires look like? If the left is +1.5 and the right is +0.5, it would look more like this from the front of the car: \ /

Or maybe when you put // that just shows a single tire? In which case it still illustrates camber.

At any rate, toe is completely adjustable via the toe links, like speedyhans said. Camber is technically not adjustable, but by moving the strut top left or right you can affect camber on a MacPherson suspension. Unfortunately i don't know what our camber specs are, but both left and right are almost certainly slightly negative, so the two front tires would like this when viewed from the front : / \

Lastly, when you lower a suspension, camber always becomes more negative. If you're measuring excessive positive camber after lowering, then yes as Mid_Life said there's probably something either wrong with the install or wrong with the suspension originally.

 

[bacarl]

By any chance could you scan & post up your alignment sheet, if you got one? Also can you confirm that both sides are positive, and which side is 1.5 and which is 0.5?

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

well its only 1.5 on one side and .5 on the other. so i think maybe i need to realign the top 3 bolts and make sure they are perfectly strait.

Do you have the printout? It is ridiculous for us to try to help with this when no one is sure which setting you are talking about.
The top of the strut assembly has a fixture that allows the strut to rotate when you turn the wheel, so forget about correcting toe by loosening those three bolts and moving the strut top. If you were to shove the top of the strut forward or backward, it would change the caster, and side to side will change the camber, but nothing you do there should affect toe.
Technically it might change it the slightest little bit, but I'm not convinced that a typical alignment shop would be able to measure the difference.
Shift the top to get the camber correct, lock down the bolts, and then use the rod ends to adjust the toe if you are concerned about the strut position messing up toe.

 

[GhostMercury]

BEFORE
the front left
-CAMBER is -0.5
-CASTER is 3.4
-TOE is 0.11
-SAI is 9.2

the front right
-CAMBER is -1.4
-CASTER is 2.8
-TOE is 0.12
-SAI is 12.0

AFTER
the front left
-CAMBER is -0.5
-CASTER is 3.4
-TOE is 0.10
-SAI is 9.2

the front right
-CAMBER is -1.4
-CASTER is 2.8
-TOE is 0.11
-SAI is 12.0

so its the camber that is messed up. Will re-aligning the strut holes help fix it?

 

[GhostMercury]

bump for the specs i posted

 

[jville]

Do you have the printout? It is ridiculous for us to try to help with this when no one is sure which setting you are talking about.
The top of the strut assembly has a fixture that allows the strut to rotate when you turn the wheel, so forget about correcting toe by loosening those three bolts and moving the strut top. If you were to shove the top of the strut forward or backward, it would change the caster, and side to side will change the camber, but nothing you do there should affect toe.
Technically it might change it the slightest little bit, but I'm not convinced that a typical alignment shop would be able to measure the difference.
Shift the top to get the camber correct, lock down the bolts, and then use the rod ends to adjust the toe if you are concerned about the strut position messing up toe.

I aligned jaxjeffs speed 6 after his suspension drop (hr) with our laser eye hunter machine. drives perfect, no abnormal tire wear.

 

[jville]

So after installing my springs the alignment place is telling me my strut towers need to be notched so they can fix the toe or whatever. What kind of bs is that. has anyone else had this problem. I'm going to loosen the bolts and then pull on the spring and see if i can get it to move any

Yes you do have to file/slot the strut tower mounting bolt holes to adjust camber/caster on the front. the rear has excentric cams

 

[GhostMercury]

yea but is that maybe a small enough amount that i could try and reposition the strut and fix it. because how could my car be diff then everyone elses

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

Yes you do have to file/slot the strut tower mounting bolt holes to adjust camber/caster on the front. the rear has excentric cams

There is a fair amount of slop in the mounting holes on the strut tower. No filing should be necessary. Loosen the three bolts, shove the strut top all the way towards the engine, trying to center it front to back (to keep caster the same on both sides) and tighten it down. This will max out the camber in the negative range. Once that is done, go back and get it tested again.

 

[bacarl]

BEFORE
the front left
-CAMBER is -0.5
the front right
-CAMBER is -1.4

AFTER
the front left
-CAMBER is -0.5
the front right
-CAMBER is -1.4

so its the camber that is messed up.....

How do you figure? Camber is identical before/after. -1.4 is a lot different than the +1.5 that you said before. Nothing wrong with -1.4. Granted they're not quite even left to right but that is not a problem, it will likely never be perfect.

However, I'm very surprised that your before/afters are so similar. After changing springs, one would expect to see a change of several tenths for caster & camber. Anytime suspension components are removed/rebuilt/replaced, things tend to move around. If the shop had aligned the car, pulled it off the rack, pulled it back on, and aligned it again, I'd still be surprised to see numbers this close. There's always some variation in the measurements and it's quite common and normal to get a few hundreths variation (like you see in your toe numbers) even in back-to-back measurements on a Hunter.

At ay rate, if you want to even out the car and add more negative camber on the left, do like Mid_Life said and push the strut top inboard. Remember to do it with the wheel off the ground or the weight of the car will be on that joint and you won't be able to budge it. But really, the alignment is fine as it is, unless -1.4 is out of spec - but I doubt it?

 

[bacarl]

Wait a sec... I bet your before and afters came off the same sheet didn't they. I forgot that Hunter sheets have two columns.

The "before" does not apply to what your car measured before the springs were installed. It measures "before" then allows repair, I think, then measures "after". Because repairs are difficult to actually do on a Hunter, I don't think they happen often, so the before/after are identical. That's exactly what I meant by typical variation in your toe numbers: nothing actually changed between the .10 and .11, the machine just picked up some variation so it printed an "after" column.

Sorry for the confusion! My experience with Hunters is from a manufacturing facility, not an alignment shop. Our Hunter is just used as as auditing machine. If there's a problem with the numbers the car goes to a seperate station/device to be adjusted.

What we need to check out is what your specs were literally before the spring install. Obviously that's not going to happen, but like I said I bet everything is still in spec. The only reason you'd need to adjust your struts is if you don't like the numbers the way they are.

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

However, I'm very surprised that your before/afters are so similar.

Similar, they're identical.
I think he told them not to do the alignment when they told him filing was necessary.
These cars have four wheel alignment adjustability, by the way. Get a complete alignment done. My car was slightly "dog-tracking" as the alignment person called it because the rears were off. Swapping the rear springs really shouldn't throw anything off back there (except the expected change in camber), but it could have already been off.

 

[GhostMercury]

but my car still pulls to the left now

 

[bacarl]

Camber doesn't have much effect on pull, unless it's off drastically. Check your tire pressures?