for some reason my right front tire had +0.5 deg camber. and tire wear suffered from it.
left front is alright at -0.4 deg

first i check the strut tops, and turned out that the right front was marker was facing out and back, so i put it to in and back to match the left front.

stock would be in and front...

that only change the camber by 0.2 deg. not enough.

so instead of buying $300 camber plates or slotting the strut tower mount i did this (pics).

now my camber is equal both sides at -0.4 deg.
not sure why the right front was that off. but there are some signs that the car had a slow impact. im the third owner with 177k miles on the chassis, so im not too worried.

NOTE: this will only work for camber...

share your thoughts, ha.


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Do your simple math and drill once
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That arm looks dangerously thin where the outer most bolt goes. I would be wary of it.

 

Fortunately for you it's thin in an area that'll be more lightly loaded, since it'll be the inner wheel in a corner pulling on it, so that wheel has less load on it and will generate less grip, so you might just get away with it if you're only street driving, but I'd still worry about it. At very least you should fill in the stock holes with some round bar or something along those lines to help keep the bolts from slipping back, which could be very bad if they started moving like that.

I would certainly NOT reccomend that other people try this, especially if the car will see track or autocross use, or even just aggressive street driving with sticky tires.

 

You know you could have just reamed out the strut mouning bolts, as the previous owner did to my car, but its ghetto either way...

Is it camber or is it caster? That's the question.

 

woah scary ****... i would have just massaged the upper hole on the strut where it bolts to the spindle. i dont think i would trust that at all.. ****...

 

Scary ****.

I think that part is that thick for a reason, and I think you've lowered the force it will take enough for one to worry.

 

Time to hit the track. Dare to be different gentleman, it's ok.

 

should have slotted the upper strut bolt, as others have said.

alot of coilovers come with those holes slotted. tried and true.

no biggie though. worst comes to worst you can just replace the balljoint assembly and slot the shock anyway.

 

if i have any issues i will update.

its not scary to me, as far as it moving in the hole. the hole drilled is far enough away making a two holes like an 8, meaning the bolt cannot slide left to right.
yes i can see after 100k miles on it maybe, but i drive less than 8k a year...

i thought about putting some round bar that was half mooned to fit in snugly but honestly i dont see it failing unless i hit something hard like a curb.

"I would certainly NOT reccomend that other people try this, especially if the car will see track or autocross use"

agreed.

and $15 at a junkyard and i can replace it...

no way could i ream out the strut tower to get enough degree change

 

what are you talking about? there is so much material in the strut that you could gain 5* +/- camber pretty easily

but as long as you are happy.

 

I hope thats only a temporary mod until you can afford some aftermarket ball-joints. I wouldn't even DD the car knowing that was on it. You should have put some lock washers on there as well. Can never be too safe...

Even though their is 2 bolts, 1 of them is basically useless if theirs ever any stress put on it. Pray to god you never bottom the car out. Bye bye ball-joints and LCA.

I do applaud your effort for adjusting the camber yourself, but I would have slotted where the shock mounts to the hub before I would drill material off of the ball-joint. I had to remove 2.3° of camber on a Saturn and slotted the bottom of the shock. Came out great but moved the entire wheel back in the wheel-well (toward the center of the vehicle).

 

strut tower? i'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. we mean for you to slot this:

 

This is what I had modified on a vehicle to change the camber. Unfortunately, if you want the camber more positive (what the OP was trying to do), its going to push the wheel further in the wheel-well. The way OP modified his, the wheel is actually able to maintain its stock location, just with adjusted camber.

Changing the shock is the way to go if all your worried about is performance.

 

OP went from +.5 to -.4

thats a net increase in negative camber... .9 degrees negative.

 

Wut?