Cobra4B

Good buddy has a G35 lowered on Tein Flex coilovers w/ EDFC w/ HREs on it. His negative camber is extreme and he's eating up tires due to this.

He had SPC adjustable A-arms installed up front which reduced the camber from -3.x to -1.9. Out back the camber is -2.2 and the allignment shop is saying the adjustment is maxed out.


Is this normal w/ the platform that when lowered the camber goes way negative? Normal that you can't adjust it back to a reasonable number? It's his daily dirver/only car so he'd like to get normal mileage out of a set of tires, especially since he was running Michelin Pilot Sports on it.

Ideally he'd have about -1.0 front and rear, but it appears this isn't possible with a lowered G/Z? Yes/No?

His goal is to restore ride quality and allow for a tire-friendly allignment. Can he do this simply by raising it up a little on the Tein bits? Or, would he be better off going back to the stock suspension w/ an Eibach Pro-Kit w/ a mild 1" drop?

Thanks,
Brian

The car... doesn't look too extreme in the pics, but tires are only lasting 10k or so before the inner edge is corded... toe has been checked.

eng

Will probably be a little harsher ride that stock, but that depends on spring rate more than replacing a few bushings with heim joints.

Front: http://www.splparts.com/main4/parts/...20upper%20arms
Rear: http://www.splparts.com/main4/parts/...0camber%20arms

Yes, its normal for a lowered car to get negative camber and for the stock adjustment not to be enough to put it back to OEM specs. Raising it up should increase the camber.

Cobra4B

^ So you're saying that the SPL arms are better than the ones he put on the front allready? Looks like they may have more adjustment.

My Corvette has a SLA aka double a-arm suspension setup. I can slam the car on the ground and still allign the car as I please. I'm guessing this has something to do wtih a McPherson Strut front setup and whatever the rear setup is. I know it's not SLA, it's pretty funky from the last time I looked at it.

So what's the recommendation? Go w/ better adjustable arms?

Cr33pin

when i had my 350z i always herd people complaing about tire feathering with the 350z an g35...? i dunno, you can google it an lots of stuff comes up

Turbox3

Highly recommend SPL parts for anything suspension related. Kuah knows what he's building. I can't speak to the G35 necessarily since I never tried to lower mine since it was a DD, but the 300ZX (and I assume 240sx) does the same thing when lowered and they are front and rear multi-link setups; no McPherson struts. I'm pretty sure the G cars are multi link setups as well, not McPherson.

I just installed SPL coilovers on my 300z and what happens in the rear is as the car is lowered via the coilovers, the wheel hub assembly where the shock mounts is raised up relative to the car and this changes the angle of the upper arm, which attaches to the wheel hub. As the angle is changed, the arm pulls back on the top of the hub which results in negative camber. The Adj camber arms then allow for you to lengthen the upper arm to bring the camber back to where you prefer. I'm no engineer though, this is just my explanation based on looking at the suspension design.

Silverbullet86

240sx front suspension is mcphearson, but the rears are as you assumed.

eng

If the ones he has now ran out of adjustment then yes they're better

If he wants a silky smooth ride, maybe/maybe not. Heim joints are harsher than urethane (which I'm guessing the ones you posted probably have for bushings), which in turn are harsher than rubber; stuff you already know, but he might not.

SPL stuff isn't always the cheapest (Circuit Sports and Megan Racing are some of the cheaper knockoffs for Nissan). However, it is some of the better stuff out there (I can't recall anyone ever complaining about their products).

If you have him call them up I'm sure they'll work with him to come up with the best solution.

Which may be as simple as getting a different eccentric bolt: http://www.phase2motortrend.com/spctobo.html

However, short of raising it back up I don't see how he's going to get away without getting some adjustable arms.

Fabrik8

Brian, A-arms don't have the pivots in the same vertical plane, and the upper and lower arms are different lengths (the upper is usually shorter), so the camber changes as the A-arm moves in bump or roll. Camber gain in roll gives more lateral grip, blah blah.

Depending on the pivot locations at the hub and the chassis, and the relative lengths of the A-arms, some car models will have a lot more negative camber gain than others when lowered. It's a lot to ask to be able to dial out many degrees of negative camber without come custom links or something like that. At that point, you're pretty damn well out of the good range of suspension travel anyway, and the steering usually sucks too.

Corey

His specs aren't that far out of whack that he should be tearing up tires. What are his toe settings?

WishIHadaSilvia

Yeah if he's eating tires like that it sounds like more of a toe problem. -2.2 shouldn't be shredding tires too fast...then again 10,000 miles is like a year so that sounds reasonable to me.

SPL arms are extremely nice though, I have their rear camber arms on my car and they have a retarded amount of adjustment - which is good because I'll need it!