I have a 1991 Integra LS that I am refreshing suspension parts for. Just purchased some parts and wanted to know your opinions. Here’s the list of parts I’m replacing soon:
The reason I purchased upper control arm with adjustable ball joint, was due to the stock control arm’s ball joint was busted. My question is, is it possible to use both camber kits instead of purchasing control arm bushings for both sides. Is there any negative effects of using the four piece camber kit right on to the new upper control arm?
You should be able to use both camber kits combined. A friend of mine did that with his Vision arms and a Progress camber kit. It’ll just depend on the settings you use because clearance with your upper arm may be an issue (although it’s often an issue w/ only one camber kit).
The only thing I really would be worried about is the quality of all of that stuff. You bought pretty much the cheapest parts on the market, non-name-brand stuff that as far as I know, hasn’t been proven. Especially that first link, you’re getting 6 different items in that auction and normally I’d expect to buy ONE of those components for that price. This makes me seriously question the quality of the parts. Who knows, maybe they’re OK.
I’m going to tell you this ahead of time so brace for it. ALL your tierods, ball joints and camber kit will fail within 6 months. I’m talking about the joints itself. The boots will crack and thus making the joints fail.
I’ve had those exact pieces and have thrown them away within 5 months in favor of MOOG tierods/ball joints bought from www.rockauto.com. The MOOG ones have lasted for more than a year now with no problems at all.
If you haven’t installed it yet, try to sell it back and get the MOOG ones… trust me, you’ll save yourself tons of headaches down the road.
A lesson learned from me and my cousin who bought the same ones on ebay.
Thanks for informing me about the camber kit combination. I do know that all these parts are the cheap. All the joints on the front suspension is shot… $50 for all those parts to last at least six months is fine with me. I also purchased the cheapest $50 tires I could get made in China. Camber ate away my $40 tires also made in China in 13k miles without denting the outer treads. I just want to raise my car back up close to stock height and get through winter. IMO I haven’t really had bad luck with parts I get for the fraction of what others pay for “quality”.
I have double camber kits on the front of my car and it did the job. They are similiar to the ones you have looked at. I bought hardened bolts for the ball joint for added safety. I also took an air hammer to the inside of my frame rail where the ball joint end of the control arm flexs into for assurance of clearence. The control arm bushing camber kits are a pain to get to and ive tried different stuff to make them stop squeking but i can’t permenetly keep them from doing it. They only stop for a short period of time. As for the rear camber kits, dont buy them!!! They WILL go bad in no time! Mine went bad after 2 weeks! All my friends went that fast too. Junk! Go for Hardrace rears or Blox Racing or (if you can afford it) skunk2 has the best quality i’ve seen. The steering products I imagine cant be the best quality either. Sounds to me like alot of added future trouble overall.
If you’ve been having tire wear issues and you’re getting some of these parts to alleviate that problem you will need to make sure that you get the car aligned. This is absolutely crucial. I can pretty much guarantee that your alignment will be much worse AFTER you install these parts than before you install them. Also, I would guess that a good portion of your alignment (and thus tire wear) problem was due to TOE, not camber.
Wow… A lot of responses on the safety… @colin: After installing the suspension parts, I will have my new cheap tires put on then straight for four wheel alignment. Def camber played a big role in my $40 cheap tires rolling like this / \ on the road. Still has a lot of tread left, I could flop them around (non-directional) and let the cambers eat the other side of the tires.
@91teg91: You have both camber kits installed and it makes squeaks? Maybe I will order some control arm bushings… I’ve already installed the rear camber kits a few days ago (~100 miles) and haven’t felt much of a difference. Now you said you had a failing rear camber kit, which part of the camber kit itself was stressed? Snapping bolt, weld cracked???
@nick///: With the amount of money I just spent on energy rear trailing arm bushing ($35), I was thinking of getting the suspension energy master package ~ $150 (if I’m correct)
[QUOTE=91NtegraLS;2172746]Wow… A lot of responses on the safety… @colin: After installing the suspension parts, I will have my new cheap tires put on then straight for four wheel alignment. Def camber played a big role in my $40 cheap tires rolling like this / \ on the road. Still has a lot of tread left, I could flop them around (non-directional) and let the cambers eat the other side of the tires.
[/QUOTE]
If you read Colin’s previous post, he stated that the TOE eats away tires… not camber. I’ve run all sorts of camber and with the toe set to zero… I show no to little camber wear.
So like others have stated… get all your suspension parts installed (bushings, ball joints, tierods… etc.) then drive directly to an alignment shop and have your car aligned and have your toe set to zero if you don’t want excessive tire wear.
If you have the money, pay a little more and buy better suspension parts instead of putting in cheap ones and having to deal with it again 5 months later. Working on the suspension is not fun especially if you have cheap parts that are not well designed for the job. Cheap suspension parts make for a fun filled cocksucking day trying to figure out which parts or good or bad.
[QUOTE=hybrid90;2172753]If you read Colin’s previous post, he stated that the TOE eats away tires… not camber. I’ve run all sorts of camber and with the toe set to zero… I show no to little camber wear.
So like others have stated… get all your suspension parts installed (bushings, ball joints, tierods… etc.) then drive directly to an alignment shop and have your car aligned and have your toe set to zero if you don’t want excessive tire wear.
If you have the money, pay a little more and buy better suspension parts instead of putting in cheap ones and having to deal with it again 5 months later. Working on the suspension is not fun especially if you have cheap parts that are not well designed for the job. Cheap suspension parts make for a fun filled cocksucking day trying to figure out which parts or good or bad.[/QUOTE]
Why does everyone here say that camber does not eat away at tires?? Yes negative camber will eat away at the inside of the tire even with a perfect toe setting. Happened to me, and every suspension tech I have ever talked to has said the same thing.
In my experience, I lowered my vehicle with Tein S.Tech, so roughly a 2" drop. Installed the ES Master bushing kit. Had toe set to spec. Didn’t get any camber kits, and my front tires were eaten away on the inside within 5 months. Roughly 5000 miles. So camber will eat away at your tires, especially anything more than 1 degree off.
camber only eats away at your tires if there is too much camber for your driving style. if only 75% of your tire ever touches the road surface, only 75% of your tire is ever going to wear.
camber is only useful for planting the whole contact patch on the surface under cornering loads (solid axle cars, like AE86 corollas and mustangs, dont need much camber at all in the rear, as the wheels are always flat during corners from the solid axle). if youre not cornering hard enough to take advantage of the camber you are running then you should set it back closer to 0 degrees with a camber kit (or corner harder :D).
maxing out camber to look cool or to fit hellaflush wheels and tires is just asking for extreme tire wear.
All I can say is please don’t by those cheap parts. There is a reason they are so cheap. You would be far better off to buy oem or quality aftermarket. I doubt that every single part that you listed you’re buying is loose. Figure out exactly what is loose and then only buy what you need. Also if you’re raising the car to stock height why bother buying camber kits right now? I realize there is a huge price different but you’ll regret it when one the those cheap balljoints pops out and you wreck your car, or worse you cause a collision. And as the others said, camber doesn’t really wear tires unless it’s extreme. Either a worn suspension part or incorrect toe caused the tire wear.
[QUOTE=93RedTeg;2187639]Why does everyone here say that camber does not eat away at tires?? Yes negative camber will eat away at the inside of the tire even with a perfect toe setting. Happened to me, and every suspension tech I have ever talked to has said the same thing.
In my experience, I lowered my vehicle with Tein S.Tech, so roughly a 2" drop. Installed the ES Master bushing kit. Had toe set to spec. Didn’t get any camber kits, and my front tires were eaten away on the inside within 5 months. Roughly 5000 miles. So camber will eat away at your tires, especially anything more than 1 degree off.[/QUOTE]
That sounds very fishy, a 2" drop, zero toe and no camber kit leading to worn out tires in 5k miles? As stated, camber contributes to tire wear but it doesn’t do much on it’s own. I ran -1.75deg of camber in the front years ago when I was still daily driving my car, I put 20k+ on my tires (ultra high performance summer bridgestone potenzas) before they were worn out. The inside edge was worn out more than the outer edge but by the time the inside was worn thru the tread the outer edge was already down to the wear bars. So really the extra wear barely shortened the life of the tire. And like OMG It’s Weasel mentioned driving style has a lot to do with it as well. Aggressive driving w/ negative camber will lead to more even wear than freeway driving w/ that same amount of camber.