Dominant Engineering control arms question.

[qcoffey]

I was looking for camber adjustable control arms for my Mz5. I was interested in the Top Speed ones that phunky.buddah did an excellent write up on, until I noticed that it doesn't really allow you to dial in much more negative camber than the factory ones.

I was looking at the stance thread and noticed that the Mz3 guys are running the Dominant Engineering arms front and rear. They offer upwards of 7 degrees of negative camber which will come in handy when I try to squeeze some 9.5s in the front and 10.5s in the rear.

So my question is, does anyone have some information on these as in relation to running them on the Mz5? Thanks.

 

[phunky.buddha]

If you look at the pictures, there was quite a bit of thread left over when the Top Speed arms are matched up to the factory arms. You can dial in a LOT more negative camber if you want. How much more do you want?

 

[qcoffey]

I am figuring I am going to need to be at least at -4+ in the rear to clear that 10.5 wheel. I am running -2.5 now with the 9.5 inch wheel and the fenders rolled and it clears without rubbing. In the front, I have no rubbing issues now with the 8 inch 35et -1.4 degrees of camber. With the 9.5 in front I will probably need at least -2.5+ to clear.

I am planning on going with coilovers next year and will be at least one inch lower all round neccessitating the need for more negative camber.

BTW, nice write up on those control arms.

 

[phunky.buddha]

Thanks! I think you could get -4 degrees out of those arms, especially if you're at -2.5 with the stock arm. You could also loosen up all your suspension mount points and try to take up all the slack in each direction required to "stretch" the suspension out towards a higher negative camber condition before bolting everything back up- it's one of the ways you can change camber just a hair in the front of the car at the strut mount points- no reason why you couldn't do it in the rear. I'd try to make the lower arms a bit longer if you have the slack to do that in your suspension arm pivot points.

 

[Silentnoise713]

Sorry, no helpful input on these control arms but damn you guys are playing in whole 'nother league. 10.5 rims and ~7 degree camber adjustments on a family car/van!? Dare I ask why? Can you even carry load? I'm not a big fan of slammed cars but can appreciate them and I look forward to seeing your end result!

 

[Marc D]

I am figuring I am going to need to be at least at -4+ in the rear to clear that 10.5 wheel. I am running -2.5 now with the 9.5 inch wheel and the fenders rolled and it clears without rubbing. In the front, I have no rubbing issues now with the 8 inch 35et -1.4 degrees of camber. With the 9.5 in front I will probably need at least -2.5+ to clear.

I am planning on going with coilovers next year and will be at least one inch lower all round neccessitating the need for more negative camber.

BTW, nice write up on those control arms.

Good luck getting a 10.5 wheel to fit In there without flaring it. It's nearly impossible to fit a wheel bigger than 9.5 into the wheel well. If you're looking for a wheel with a lot of lip, it's not going to happen. The distance of the hub to the rear quarter panel is too small for nice wide wheels.

Friend put in 18x9.5 wheels in the rear, which has a working offset of +32 (or +30, can't remember). The rear fender needed to be flared out ( which didn't go too well since the lines of the body don't look good flared out), and it still had poke. He's getting rid of the wheels now because he realizes that it's fitment isn't proper for it, unless you have onikyan.

Another owner on the Japanese minkara blogs is using a 18x9.5 wheel with a +35 offset, and it barely tucks under the rear quarter panel, with the wheel almost touching it. He has -5 camber with camber arms and custom control arms.

Why do you want to have a 10.5 wheel anyway? I'm assuming that you arent going for "more traction" since our cars are FWD anyway, but if you're looking for aesthetics in having a huge lip in the rear, you won't be able to do it without extensive modifications. With the only allowable width from the quarter to the hub, the only "width" the would be from inside of the hub, and you won't be able to see it.

I currently have a 19x8.5 and a +35 working offset. It has only 7-8 millimeters to the quarter panel. My next wheel setup will be 20x9 with a working offset of 38. It will have a 2.2 inch lip which is the absolute maximum without having to do extensive flaring or modifications. New wheels will be coming next year though.

Going from a 9.5 inch width wheel to a 10.5 width wheel will increase the wheel width on both sides by 13 mm. Basically, adding one inch of width to any wheel will use up 13 mm more space. Looking at your pictures, your mz5 is pretty conservative in height, but if you're planning to tuck wheel, I would worry about clearance on the inside and outside of the wheels.

Edit: here's the japanese blog set.
http://minkara.carview.co.jp/userid/589775/car/504226/937246/note.aspx
The wheels are all 18x9.5 offset +35, and the tuck under barely with the massive amount of camber he has. If you can see, there's no room between the wheel and quarter panel anymore.

He has since put 5 mm spacers on there so it barely pokes out. Unless you are looking for an oni-kyan (鬼チャン, or stupid crazy camber) look AND you're trying to tuck the tire, good luck, I'm looking forward to your project! If you dont plan to tuck tire or wheel, you can run 20x10.5 or even go 20x12 and go mexiflush or donk style and it wouldn't matter.


Not trying to steer you away from an interesting project, I'd love to see it done if possible. but just think of all your other variables before you invest in another set of wheels which you may ultimately regret because it doesn't fit right with only minimal modifications. When I mean minimal, I mean just a roll, a slight pull, and camber arms. Extensive modifications include flaring, cutting, welding, and custom control arms. Also is your car a daily driver? Have you driven a car that has oni camber? Guarantee the tires won't last long if you daily drive a car like that.

Anyway good luck. What wheels were you planning on getting anyway?

 

[qcoffey]

Thanks for the input fellas. I definitely realize the challenge ahead. I wanted to go for a more stanced look than I currently have. The 8" I am running up front isn't giving me that look I want. I definitely am not looking daily drive it with that setup. Right now I drive it daily with the 8"/9.5" combo. The 35et front and 40 et rear allow the wheels to clear with just a roll in the rear. With the camber arms front and rear I will be able to clear even fully loaded down with family and vacation stuff. I currently rub a bit.

Marc, that website link you provided is awesome, those Premacys are sick. I love that aggressive camber. There is no doubt that it is a show look and is definitely the style overseas. I am darn sure gonna try to squeeze that sommab%#h under there.

I will definitely start a build thread when I get started. I will be keeping the current wheels and running the rear 9.5s on the front and getting the 10.5s rear. The wheel doesn't actually have a lip, I is a concave style. They will be getting powder coated a more aggressive color too.

Thanks again for all the input.

 

[qcoffey]

I actually did more research on my wheel setup, and they don't offer the 10.5 like I had thought the did. They do offer the 9.5 in a 20et, which will give it more poke. Hmmmm.... Time to ponder options. Might just push the current ones out 5mm at each corner giving me an effective offset of 30mm front and 35rear. With the coilovers, I will still need to run a more aggressive camber and attain that aggressive stance. I might email Dominant to see if he has any feedback from the Premacy crowd running his product.

 

[phunky.buddha]

Reference point- I have a half inch gap between the top of the tire and the fender lip. I haven't rolled my rear lips yet. My tire is 8.75" wide on the 17x7 wheel, and at -1.7 degrees of camber and +55mm offset, the plane connecting the sidewall edges clear the fender lip by 2mm. With the tire being this square on the shoulder, any setup that doesn't have the sidewalls clearing the fender lip at rest causes them to rub.

For every 1 whole degree of camber that you tilt inwards, you'll gain about 5.65mm (x) of additional clearance at the fender edge based on a 25.5" tall (which your 235/35-19 NT555 is) tire [x = 323.85mm * sin (angle, degrees)], assuming the tire tilts around its center- which it probably is close to, but truly isn't...

And now looking up the specs on your tire- the section width is 9.37 inches on a spec 19x8.5 wheel, but you're running 19x9.5. The section width change I tested ended up a little more than 0.2 inches change for every 0.5 inch of wheel width, especially when you go more than a half inch out- so I'm going to call your tire 9.8 inches wide when stretched out on the 9.5 inch wide wheel.

With that out of the way, and comparing yours to mine since your tire height is pretty similar to mine in the rear, this is how the math breaks out: Your tire is an inch wider than mine, so you gain 13mm to the fender, then you gain another 15mm from your lower offset for a total of 28mm more "poke" than I have on my rears. I estimate I have 19mm more that I can shove my tires out if I roll the fender flat before I hit it on compression, so you've made up another 8-9mm of space probably just in camber. I'd guess your rear camber is sitting at around -3.0 degrees, maybe a hair more (8.5/5.65 = 1.5 degrees more on top of my 1.7). If you shoved a 5mm spacer in on the rear you'll have to gain another 0.9 degrees of negative camber to compensate.

As far as getting another 9.5 but in a different offset, I'd recommend that you use identical wheels and tires at all 4 corners and then use spacers so you can rotate the wheels/tires from corner to corner.

Oh, and the highest amount of negative camber that I could get on the alignment rack with the front camber plates maxed out was right about -2.5 degrees. If you used the same setup and maxed out the front negative camber, another 5mm on a spacer is probably all you'd be able to fit up front with the wheel and tire you have now.

Hope all this doesn't spin your head too much.

 

[phunky.buddha]

Ok, and now just taking a guess by looking at my original high res pictures of my camber arms- when I had the arms matched up against the stock ones to get a starting length that matched factory, it looked like there were an additional 6, maybe 7 full threads that could still be closed up and used to shorten the arm. Based on the fact that 4 threads longer made my camber come out to -1.6 and -1.7 degrees with a half inch gap to the fender using a tire almost the same height as yours (which assumes we have the same ride height), those 4 threads are probably worth right about a full degree of camber, maybe slightly more. If you're able to shorten by 6-7 threads instead of making the arm longer to reduce negative camber, you can probably get to your -4 degree goal or even close to -5. Loosen up the suspension mount points and start shoving things around, and you might be able to do slightly better. That would give you your 5-6mm more clearance at the fender, maybe even 10mm if you were able to get to -5.

BUT

This is all theory/guessing...

 

[qcoffey]

Ok, and now just taking a guess by looking at my original high res pictures of my camber arms- when I had the arms matched up against the stock ones to get a starting length that matched factory, it looked like there were an additional 6, maybe 7 full threads that could still be closed up and used to shorten the arm. Based on the fact that 4 threads longer made my camber come out to -1.6 and -1.7 degrees with a half inch gap to the fender using a tire almost the same height as yours (which assumes we have the same ride height), those 4 threads are probably worth right about a full degree of camber, maybe slightly more. If you're able to shorten by 6-7 threads instead of making the arm longer to reduce negative camber, you can probably get to your -4 degree goal or even close to -5. Loosen up the suspension mount points and start shoving things around, and you might be able to do slightly better. That would give you your 5-6mm more clearance at the fender, maybe even 10mm if you were able to get to -5.

BUT

This is all theory/guessing...

(hand) Phunky, you did it again. That is quite a detailed synopsis.

Currently, I am actually looking into some hub-centric spacer options. I am thinking of initially going with 5mm all the way around, or maybe a 10mm in the back. With the Dominant arms, I should be able to dial in the needed camber in the front, especially with the adjustable camber plates up top. In the rear, the Dominant arms and toe links will give me the needed negative camber to clear.

I like your idea about sticking with the 9.5s and running the spacers to give it a balanced look. Being able to rotate the tires would definitely add to the longevity off the tires, especially at such a negative angle in the rear.

What I like about the Dominant kit, is they will powder coat the products any color you want. I like the Top Speed arms, but without the other products available, the DE arms and links seem to be the way to go.

 

[phunky.buddha]

Cool, well get the Dominant arms and write up a review.

As far as equal tires, they're definitely the way to go- I took out the stagger on my S2000 and run the same size/offset wheels with 255/40-17 tires all around. I love it.

Oh, and the rear studs have about 2.5 turns MORE available on the lugs compared to the front, so with 8mm spacers being ok on the front (what I'm running now), you'll probably be just fine with 10mm spacers in the back.