suspension question

[ZoomVT]

Im not very familiar with suspension mods and i am looking into lowering my car. I have read in other threads people mention camber kits if you plan to lower your car, especially with large wheels.
What are camber kits? what are they for? whats the problem with lowering the car?

 

[Mace Windu]

This is in a few different threads. Try this one.

http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104976

Goldwing does some good explaining in that one.

 

[ZoomVT]

just looked at it. what im trying to figure out is what i need the camber kit for. I sort of get the issue, tire wear due to an angle offset? how much extra wear i should expect. I am concerned cause th rubber for the 18" wheels is not cheap and i dont want to be wearing my tires estra fast or unevenly if i can prevent it.
any advise welcome.

 

[DE31]

camber is how the wheels lean like from the top left or right. where if you look at it from the front or back it would look like this \----/ thats positive camber. negative is /----\ im pretty sure lowering would cause it to have negative camber. camber kits fix it so it goes back to l----l.

(yes illustrations are TEh OwNeRage)

just looked at it. what im trying to figure out is what i need the camber kit for. I sort of get the issue, tire wear due to an angle offset? how much extra wear i should expect. I am concerned cause th rubber for the 18" wheels is not cheap and i dont want to be wearing my tires estra fast or unevenly if i can prevent it.
any advise welcome.

 

[Mace Windu]

There are still no camber kits out there to fix this effect. You can expect your tires' inside edge to wear out about 10-15% faster than normal I would say. So instead of rotating every 7000 miles I would go for every 5500 to 6000 miles.

That's just from posts I've read on this forum, not actual experience

 

[DE31]

theres always of course the option of coilovers with the adjustable camber plates... but then they're expensive.

There are still no camber kits out there to fix this effect. You can expect your tires' inside edge to wear out about 10-15% faster than normal I would say. So instead of rotating every 7000 miles I would go for every 5500 to 6000 miles.

That's just from posts I've read on this forum, not actual experience

 

[ZoomVT]

i thought eibach had a pro kit that included a camber kit to fix this.
no?

 

[Gambino]

the lowering spring kits do not include camber correction

 

[ZoomVT]

Thanks everyone for the info and help. Now i would like to know how to measure the angle offset. i suppose that is a combination of wheel offset + tire width?
I guess rotating tires a bit earlier is the only solution for now.

 

[xelderx]

The amount of negative camber you will get just by adding lowering springs is not enough to cause excessive inside tire wear if you rotate your tires normally. What causes the accelerated tire wear on our cars (MacPherson strut front setup) is the toe. The trick is that on MacPherson strut setups the camber and toe are directly related so changing the camber will change the toe. When tire wear is the major concern worry about it first since it causes more wear than camber. You shouldn't gain more than a degree or so of negative camber from most lowering springs and having a little negative camber helps handling anyway.

EDIT_______

Ok..I was reading around and I see that you Mazda6 and Mazda3 guys are having trouble with the rear camber not the front and that it gets way out of spec with some lowering kits. I've put Eibach springs on a Mazda6 and I didn't notice any crazy camber problems so I didn't realize that some people were getting some big negative #'s for rear camber. Everyone is correct that a camber fix for the rear of the Mazda3/6 will not be as simple as the Proteges.

 

[Mace Windu]

Yeah, even if you get expensive coilovers there is no way to adjust the rear camber because of the 3's 3-link suspension back there. Eibach is allegedly coming out with the correction kit, but it seems to be on permanent delay.