Camber issue, pic inside!
 

Background:

Was taking a left turn pretty hard trying to beat a light. Had the foot on the gas and started to spin out.

Cars left front tire hit the CURB hard as the car was spinning out to the left and hopped on top of the island (4 feet wide Maybe a 8-10 inch curb). The whole car then proceeded to hop over the island. I landed on the opposite side of the street facing oncoming traffic. Quickly started her up and drove to safety.

quickly right after I drove to safety I noticed the cars alignment was off drastically. (of course) . I inspected the steering components and bought new outer tie rods noticing the front left was bent. The brake rotor was also bent. Bought new brakes and bearings for both sides.

The new tie rods helped a lot. Steering returned back to center on its own, but the car still veered right.

Just took it to a alignment shop and this is the results....

The tech said the camber was off too much on the front left. He did the best he could. The car still veers right and is A LITTLE BETTER than before. He also said in accidents like mine, usually its the lower control arm or knuckle? that gets bent.

I proceeded to inspect my left side LCA and noticed the bushing was busted on that side. I have a new one on the way.

What I wanna know is can anyone point me to other possible steering components that could have been damaged that I should look at?
THANKS TO ALL ADVICE AND REPLIES!:icon_tup:

CLIFFS: hit curb hard with driver front tire during a spin out
alignment jacked up, replaced tie rods, did alignment, driver camber still off,
car still veers right.
need help with which parts to replace?


DIAGRAM shows adjusmentshttp://img19.imageshack.us/img19/878...0908165142.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

lol, it'll handle better with negative camber, so slide into a curb on the other side!

if you're hunting for bent parts, its probably a bent strut/spindle (its one piece), although you should look at the lower control arm bolt, and the lower control arm too, its really easy to get out of the car

The idiot that aligned your car is obviously from Firestone. They have messed up my tires countless times. Here's what you do when you go back in and ask for your car to be fixed PROPERLY:


SIT in the car during the alignment and have the fuel level 1/2 way. If they make you wear safety glasses and press on the brake/turn the wheel, so be it, but you ARE sitting in that car.

Camber: -1.0 was excellent for Daily Driving
Toe: -0.05 OUT
Caster: As much as you can get ~ 4 Degrees


Don't let some moron with a job tell you "Green is Good." It's not. They are uneducated in the fine arts of suspension geometry and tuning. If they don't do it, demand your money back and go elsewhere.

This was done at a LES SCHWAB so I guess its equivalent.

Well the steering veers right and I have to hold the wheel left.

Another important bit, he said the left side camber MAXES out at -0.1 and wont adjust anymore.

Do FBs have knuckle?

And im gonna have to check out the bottom of the strut...

When he said "MAXES" he meant in the positive direction. This further proves my point of an incompetent shop. Negative camber is what you need. You came in with -1.0 which is okay, but -0.1 is NOT.

Veering is 90% toe angle related, and by looking at yours you can easily read that. Those numbers should be equal from side to side with you IN the car as I described earlier. The other 10% is split between camber and caster imbalance, but definitely not as critical in a RWD car. When FWD cars have an imbalance in caster, they pull during torque-steer occurrences (heavy throttle application).

Thanks for the advice guys.

Any other areas I can look at on the steering/suspension ?

Something is for sure bent or heavily shifted, and the affect it will have on how the car drives mirrors exactly what your alignment spec printout is showing, before and after. So, I don't know what "sirlaughsalot" is trying to say/imply. That print out sheet has nothing to do with the shop that did the alignment, that is the print out gotten from a hunter alignment machine, which many shops have, and is considered the best alignment computer/system in the industry.

Every vehicle has a different camber, caster and toe spec, as assigned by engineers and manufacturers who made the vehicle... no "1 magical" spec works for everything...

1. camber/caster is individually adjustable by rotating our strut top. this only achieves roughly a +/- of .5degrees of camber and/or caster, and can obviously only be adjusted in 4 positions. you camber/caster was indeed corrected to the best of the technicians ability given the allowed factory adjustments

2. As a general rule of thumb, ANYTHING OVER .5 DEGREES OF CROSS CAMBER WILL CAUSE A PULL, PULL WILL BE TO THE SIDE MORE POSITIVE, which is exactly what is being showed via your alignment specs

3. Cross caster will rarely cause a pull, as caster is not a wearing angle, in a daily driving sense, it will have the most affect on steering wheel return to center after a turn. in terms of your alignment sheet, a sacrifice had to be made to get the more important driveability/wear angle (camber) back in spec, as a trade off, putting a minor affect angle (caster) out


by looking at the print out, i would say you either have a bent lower control arm or a shifted subframe, perhaps a bent steering knuckle (but it would put that after the first 2)

You definitely bent something evidence by the broken control arm bushing as you stated.
You could have a bent/broken:

1. control arm
2. strut assembly
3. ball joint
4. tierods ( which you already verified )
5. Torsion rod ( attaches from the from frame to the control arm )
6. Frame member might be bent ( need to verify by measuring the frame points )

All of this may not just be on the left side that initially hit the curb. The right went over as well
and may have similiar damage.

One rule to keep in mind, if you replace it on one side, do the other so you can be sure you
can reduce the unknowns on both sides.

Wow! To bend a rotor implies a a fairly hard blow. You need to really go over everything under
the car and make sure its solid if you want it to drive right again.

When is the last time you had an alignment and part way through it something was bent? The initial settings are better, that's my point. An incompetent alignment tech can work on any rack and screw up, as shown here.

First get it realigned correctly. The tech should be able to see a fracture in the crystalline structure of whatever metal is tweaked or broken once the car is carefully examined on the lift.

^how were the before specs better?

the RF camber/caster are the same before and after, as nothing was changed and the toe was brought back in the dead center of allowable tolerance.

the LF was 1.5 degrees away from even being on the edge of factory allowable tolerance and the caster was a degree out. After the strut top was rotated to attempt to fix the camber/caster angles, the camber is now only .5 of a degree away, and the caster in dead on. That is the limit of which you can get from factory adjustments. and once again, this LF toe was adjusted dead nuts in the center of allowable tolerance

so in summary, we went brought the LF camber closer to spec by 1 degree, and LF caster back into spec, reduced cross camber and cross caster by a degree, and brought both LF and RF toe angles back into spec.

So once again, how was the before better in any way?

No one ever said that something all of a sudden got bent in the middle of an alignment, If a person brings there car to a shop and says "i want an alignment", whoever works on it isnt gonna go through and carefully examine and scrutinize every piece on the car. the vehicle will be racked and lifted, given a quick shake down to make sure there isnt a toasted ball joint or tierod, and then to the alignment rack it goes. Unless the customer specifically states they hit something and now the alignment is off, the tech will not look for bent parts



oh, and re-reading that the brake rotor itself was bent, and the fact that camber is currently the only angle thats still out, im kinda suspecting the spindle could be tweaked

Well additional bits I found out. The steering rubs when turned all the way left. Something is rubbing.
The shock tower adjustment on the left is also different than the right
The shock tower with the missing green cap is the driver.
Steering wheels is towards the left at rest.

Pictures are attached

The Spindle is connected with the shock?
If I buy a new shock it comes with a new spindle ?
This sucks. Wanted to drive the FB to seven stock. Guess I'll be taking the FC

Spindle is part of the strut, if you buy a new strut you have a new spindle. A new
shock insert, no.

The right side, while within factory specs, is worse off. Something is definitely bent however when you compare the shock towers and their resulting angles. According to the pics you would think the one missing the cap is the RIGHT side, while the one with all four green caps is the LEFT. This would yield those angles on a normal car...

Is that correct Ex-EG?

you are backwards. The strut top missing 1 green cap is the LEFT/driverside as you can see the fuseable link and FC leading coil, not to mention the other side u can see the charcoal canister and washer fluid jug, implying that the side with 4 green caps is the RIGHT side

Sgt is correct. But yeah. Got a LCA coming . If this doesn't help, I'll check the strut spindle .

Another part the gets bent really easy in curb hits is the steering knuckle. If your changing the LCA might as well order a steering knuckle.

A knuckle can't be purchased from a place like rock auto ? Mazda only part I assume

Black Dragon has them in their catalog

Thanks kc repu!

When buying new shocks, from tokico for example, number 16 is not included correct

Correct. They are just selling you an insert to replace the existing stock internals.
OEM struts are oil filled like motorcycle tubes. You drain and then swap in the new
insert.

#16 is 300+. Ouch.

Junkyard is my best bet...

Get the right size spindle for you 1st gen. Not sure what you have but there are
small and large spindles, split by years and models. Should be able to look it up
easy enough. Just wanted to warn you.

Thanks tg. You've helped me a lot with my FB issues.
I'm looking at both steering knuckles as I type this on my phone.
My mind wants to say the drivers is slightly bent. But I could be wrong. I will have to remove then and compare

If you have a 12A car, the struct tubes, knuckles, and A-arm should be easy to find here on the fourm for a reasonable price used. The GSL-SE are more expensive because of the bigger brakes and better bolt pattern.

Just want to update this..

I had the car on stands with the wheels off. Carefully examining both sides for damage.

The driver side LOOKS fine. The knuckle looks similar to the other side. Not bent.
But I guess you can never be too sure. Also the LCA doesnt look damaged at all. So the new LCA I bought was maybe for nothing.

The ONLY thing I did notice...and I forgot to add this in the original post.
The inner tie rods and outer rods are of different brands. I accidentally ordered different brands while shopping at rockauto (ordered @ separate times). They are meant for the RX-7 but look entirely different.
Pics as always below.

Beck and Arn Inner rod. Passenger sidehttp://img15.imageshack.us/img15/802...0912170122.jpg
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/8...0912170454.jpg

Driver side is a MEVO inner rod. This is the side with the MAXED out camber.
http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/1...0912170246.jpg
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/4...0912170507.jpg

Im examining the number of threads on the tire rod center stud on the drivers side and theres much more.

Do the different brands really make a diff?
Now my next attempt to fix this is to get another beck and arn inner and see if the tech can get the driver side similar to the passenger side...

And heres a pic of the knuckles
Pass side
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6...0912170148.jpg

Driver side
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/4...0912170412.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

They look similar in shape

And LCA pics
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/7...0912170216.jpg
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/299...0912170235.jpg

the tierod difference shouldnt matter, as they can be adjusted and the only realistically affect 1 alignment angle. just to amuse us all, examine where the bolts go through the subframe, and see if there is any obvious signs of shifting or movement, you may be able to see a "cleaner" area of paint where the nut used to reside.

Its hard to tell if via pics if anything is bent as the camera angles may be just slightly different, enough so as to which a good comparison cant be made. sometimes the easiest way to compare some parts is to juxtapose them against known good part, or lay it belly to belly against the opposite sides partner. i.e. lay the knuckles belly to belly as they are mirror opposites of eachother, same with control arms.

What aspect of alignment do the rods control?
That totally sucks that you said that the tie rods dont matter lol

I just ordered a inner rod similar to the beck and arn style. O well it would be better to have matching brands.

I guess I should REALLY remove the parts to compare instead of taking a glance. Ill check out the subframe bolts tomorrow in the day.

just toe. the left outer one looks like its got a torn boot, so you needed it anyways

the shape, per say, doesnt matter too much. The adjuster in between 2 rod ends allows them as a whole to be extended or collapsed to adjust the toe angles... sometimes when a tie rod gets bent bad enough, the adjuster cannot compensate fully. If the adjuster is bent it will caus erratic movements/changes when attempting to adjust the toe angles. but either way, the inner and outer tierod, and the adjuster in between will only mess with toe, and has no affect on camber



...it does look like, for one reason or another, something (maybe tire) has been rubbing on the strut rod on the passenger side

Correct with the tire rub. Due to konig rewinds I had previously .

So if I'm veering right..that means the toe is off, which also leads to tie rods, which also leads to the pics. If I decrease threads on the driver side adjuster and increase on the pass adjuster it should drive straight hypothetically

On the driver side there's too much thread showing on the adjuster . The adjuster does look messed up. Good thing I have a new one coming with the rods.

Thanks guys. This is kind of all coming together . I still don't know why the camber is -1.0

Maybe a damaged strut housing/spindle
. But the veering is driving me crazy . I want to install my new tires already...

That outer boot has a zerg fitting installed lol. I guess when you put too much it squirts out the excess

Tierods aren't the only thing that affects toein. The torsion rods can affect it also, they also
affect caster as well. If one is bent or bowed it may be adding extra toe and/or caster.

Toe doesnt cause a pull, it will just cause the steering wheel to be crooked, as the wheels will naturally try to center themselves when driving down the road. Many mistake a crooked steering wheel as a pull, because they are holding the wheel straight and expecting to go straight. A pull is what you will get when you let the wheel go completely and let it settle on its own, and then the car still tends to go left or right.

Also, a pull is realistically only gonna be caused by 2 things...

1. Cross camber (the difference between the left and right camber) As a general rule of thumb, anything over .5 degrees of cross camber will cause a pull, the pull will be to the more positive side, and will usually be amplified more so when one side is a negative camber, and the other is a positive.

2. Tires. uneven tread depths, separated belts, uneven tire pressures, different make/model/load and/or speed ratings...

(and just for technicality purposes #3. Caster. caster rarely caused a pull, and easily needs over a degree of cross before anything is affected by it in strait line driving)


with your case, the pull is 98% a camber issue.

Back to the drawing board. Well atleast the new rods should center the wheel.

If I can just find out why the camber is not adjusting on the driver side

If I adjust the pass side to -0.1 to even out the camber there could be uneven tire wear but the car should sit evenly . Might have the tech do this

that would for now be the best temporary solution, but unfortunately looking at your pics of the strut towers, he wont be able to get anymore negative camber outta the passenger side