Suspension experts: alignment help!
 

Alright, my problems started when I smacked the car into a curb a few months ago. The car wanted to drift without my permission, but I managed to keep the damage minimal... so I thought. The left front rim was dinged pretty good (temporarily has a HUGE balance wieght to keep it good) the the left rear was creamed (though it still held air.) The rears have since been replaced with S5 TII's.

Anyway, the impact was hard enough to bend the driver's side lateral link into a lovely banana shape. A trip to the junkyard and about an hour fixed that problem. I went to the local alignment shop, and a few things could not be brought into spec.

Front left: (light impact corner)
Caster: 3.8* (spec : 4.0* to 5.4*)

Front right:
Caster: 3.9* (spec: 4.0* to 5.4*)

Front:
Cross Camber: 0.9* (spec -0.5* to 0.5*)

Rear left: (hard impact corner)
Camber: 0.3* (spec -1.2* to 0.2*)

Rear right:
(no problems)

Rear:
(no problems)

My main concern is the funky camber in the RL wheel, what kind of damage can cause this? The bent lateral link gave it about +3*, but replacing it still didn't totally fix the problem.

Also, what can cause the front caster to be out-of-wack like that?

Any insight would be appreciated, as the car looked OK from underneath during the look-overs I've had.

Rear camber on one side can be due to a different toe setting (toe cams change camber on the back semi-trailing arms), or due to the small individual links that are about 1" long and are on the inside of the trailing arms, linking them to the subframe. Worst case scenario could be that the actual hub carrier assembly is bent, so you could carefully inspect it for small cracks and call it good if none are found. Front and rear camber can be tuned with aftermarket parts anyways, and if you end up doing more performance (competitive) driving in sanctioned events, you might want to get front and rear camber adjusting devices because getting negative camber is very important when trying to increase the car's grip capability.

As for the front caster and camber, I wouldn't worry about those because they are so minor and the FC stock front alignment is so noncritical and mundane that I doubt you'll notice it.

Well, the problem is that camber is still fine on the right rear. The camber adjusting toys (to my knowledge) adjust both sides at the same time. This means I'll be running about one degree negative on the left, but somewhere around -2.5 on the driver's. I don't care for that thought. I like things even.

I saw that little link you mentioned in the FSM, I'll have a look at it sometime this week, and I'll check the whole hub mess too.

Thanks for the help.

Check Mazdatrix. They have individual ones that replace the links and each can be adjusted. I have them on my S5 TII. I believe they're around $180, but check their site. I purchased them quite a while ago.

Yeah, there are two types or rear camber adjusters.

Type 1: Adjustable bar with hiem links on its ends that replaces the subframe link between the subframe and chassis. Changing its length will change rear camber on both wheels at the same time.

Type 2: Much smaller version of type 1 but there are two links included, and they replace the rear semi-trailing arm links in the inboard section of the trailing arms, and allow individual camber adjustment for each wheel.