Slotting stock struts
 

Has anyone slotted their stock struts? The hope is that next season a full coilover suspension, top hats and control arms will be on the car but for the remainder of this season my Hoosier A7's are only using about 2/3-3/4 of the 245 SW and I need more camber in the front very badly and very cheaply.

The car already has Whiteline camber bolts.

Very cheaply .. have you tried altering tire pressures to change grip?

I'm already running the A7's at 28 PSI.

As measured with a tape, the rear is using the full 9 3/4" that's there, the fronts are using 6 1/4". That's alot of time and grip being lost.

Following very cheaply .. IIRC one can use camber bolts both in upper and lower mounting hole, to get slightly even more camber .. after that only options that cost more. Next in cheapness .. hmm, whiteline's camber/caster front mount?
Then there are more expensive options, camber plates and/or coilovers, that may already come with camplates and may have slotted holes. Some cheaper camplates (eg. Velox's $329/Beatrush $332) are not too expensive compared to mentioned whiteline's mount ($198) and ease a lot camber alignment, so i'd probably would go straight to them. Unless of course they do not fit in class rules.

Whiteline doesn't sell those mounts anymore. They had a great many failures and pulled the product.


OP, slotting the stock struts shouldn't be an issue. I'd slot the top hole only, and if that isn't enough, pickup another set of camber bolts for the lower hole.

Hmm, i still saw those mounts in stock @ft86speedfactory, hence mention. I wonder though, what's there to fail, construction seems simple enough to be more robust then eg. generic alu camplates.

Even using the same bearing as the OEM mounts, but with better seals, they couldn't stop the bearings from going. I've seen bearings not make it to the end of the owners driveway. Hell, I've seen an owner put them in, torqued correctly, put the car down, turn the steering wheel from lock to lock, raise the car back up, and put the OEM ones back on. Didn't even need to move the car an inch and the bearings came out crunchy. WL either had the press fit too tight, or the position of the bearing allowing the additional camber and caster was causing the issue.


When WL was selling them one of the 'features' was that the mounts could be clocked to three different positions to give varying amounts of camber and caster. There was a few reports of people having success with the mounts, but I'm pretty sure everyone of those success stories came from people that weren't using them for max camber and caster.

I started to slot one of the upper holes on my factory strut. After spending some time and not seeing much progress and dulling some bits in the process, I decided to stick with the camber bolts. lol

It's totally doable with some time and elbow grease. How much camber are you looking to dial in? Its possible to get up to -3* using camber bolts alone.

I didn't know you could get that much! I never tried the upper and lower bolts. Nice.



Also, a 12mm camber bolt in the inner hole on the rear lower control arm can get you plus or minus .5 degrees.

Compare the cost of a proper solution to wasting $250+ each tires.

Getting the camber from bolts, slots, or plates isn't going to change the tire wear. Not getting the camber certainly will.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious.

My point was if you're already dropping well north of $1k per set of Auto-X tires, go ahead and solve your problem the right way, vs the half-assed way.

There's nothing half assed about slotting the struts... lots of good coilovers come pre-slotted on the upper hole. Adding camber at the knuckle is slightly better than at the upper mount because of the SAI.

To the OP, if you're running 245's you might not have any clearance at the spring perch to get extra camber from slotting the struts. I have my struts slotted and whiteline camber bolts, and maxed out at about -2.2* before there wasn't enough clearance between tire and spring perch. That's with 17x8 +45's and 225/45 AD08R's.

If you've got room, definitely slot the upper holes!

Put the 14mm bolt in the 16mm hole, and add camber bolts to the other hole. I got -3.8 degrees when I maxed out both sides before my alignment.

How much camber are you running now, and how much do you want to run?

I ran into this as well. Similar wheels, after around -2.5* there wasnt enough clearance in the front.

I run the so dreaded offset mounts from whiteline on R-comps (maxxis RC1) and had to use a spacer in the front to clear the spring. After 4 days of track the mounts are perfect and I like very much how the car handles now, understeer is completely gone. Spacers might have to do with that, as I tried with 5mm and then 20mm and I could totally feel more oversteer with the 20mm, but I liked the turn-in feeling more with the 20mm. There probably is some toe-out during braking since sometimes it wants to wander, but its so easy to make it wander into the right place and make it turn quickly.

Back to the subject, with those mounts and camber bolts in the front, im nowhere near maxed and I have -3*, you could totally get to around -5* on those, so the mounts alone would probably be good enough to around -3.5. They are solid iron/steel (cant tell between the two, but from the weight its not aluminium). They seem more solid than any other camber plate I've seen out there and cheaper, reason why I went with it. Only time will tell if they really are sturdy.

Could you post a link to those mounts?

Not to mention less maintenance, longer service life, better ride, and less NVH.

This is where I got them from https://www.ft86motorsports.com/susp...-fr-s-brz.html. I bought them last december so they may or may not still be available as some people claim, I havent followed up on the matter.

Wow, maybe I was incorrect.

Do you have any poping sounds as you turn the steering wheel?

One popping sound (or rather cracking) every morning or after the car has been sitting for several hours without bein driven. It cracks once and then it makes no other sound or noise. It is not more noisy than oem, you dont feel any extra vibrations. It feels like oem, except for that one crack every morning before leaving for work.

Yeah, that's a bad bearing in one or both of those mounts.

Yup, I've gotten -3.0/-3.2 using 2 sets of spc bolts with the factory damper and springs. Others were able to get as much as -2.8 with the spc bolts in the lower hole and transferring the factory lower bolt into the upper hole.

I wanted to see how much camber I can get with just a slotted upper hole on the factory struts without any eccentric bolts.

Even tho it makes the sound only once? They always made that sound (from day 1 when I picked it up from the shop) and the guys who installed it prepare almost exclusively race cars and they didnt say anything wrong about the product or installation.

A) used A7's don't cost $250 each, I paid $350 for my entire set

B) Motion controls are planned for next season, I discovered that the fronts aren't wearing evenly. I want to address that now rather than waiting, because I'm looking for lower times. Wearing them out a bit early is not a concern or factor, they're R-comps that are used about 8 minutes on an ax weekend. The only "proper" solution is whatever works, is safe and fits my budget.

C) There is nothing improper about gaining camber at the hub and it's better than gaining it at the top hat.

D) I'm not made of money. If I can get to the -2.5° I want for very little $$$ safely I would rather do that than waste money on top hats that's I'll be replacing next year with Racenseng's.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, @DocWalt has got me pointed in the right direction as well I believe. I just have to take the car off the road and get the struts off for a weekend.

You don't need to take them out to slot them... mine were slotted while the car was on the alignment rack (just jacked up at the front). Just pull the front wheels, unbolt the knuckle and slot away with a die grinder.

They didn't stop making them, they just stopped listing them as a product for the BRZ/FRS. The mount was the old product from a WRX, and on the WRX chassis they don't have the bearing issues.

have you considered simply not running 245s and stick to 225s instead?



next year you'll have all your suspension goodies to take advantage of more rubber, for now it's better to deal with the limitations in a sensible way.

Yup. Pull one and give it a turn by hand. I'll be crunchy. :mad0259:

:cheers: I forgot about that.

Running a narrower tire won't change the need for more camber... dropping to a 225 will still be chewing up the outer edge.

I don't know how much time it took wparsons to cut a decent sized slot on the struts, but the lower bolts (SPC #81260) can be had for as little as under $30 from most vendors. This and transferring the factory lower bolt to the upper hole will get you the -2.5 your looking for. Though I'd like to see how much camber you can get just by slotting.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/s...FVKDfgodD1wJTA

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Specialty-Pr...25.m3641.l6368 (for $21 plus these are galvanized too! The set I bought had the old black coating that is more prone to rusting)

Also, depending on the offset of the wheels you are using, you may need wheel spacers to clear the spring perch.

A friend of mine slotted his in an hour and has -3.3 on one side, -3.1 on the other (he needs to slot that one a little more). He's using a whiteline camber bolt as well. I took it out for one run and beat all my own times (in a borrowed FR-S lol) and all of his in one try. The camber WORKS and if you're looking for more camber it's basically free. Do it!
Edit: FWIW The bolt switching trick works well too, but won't get you as much. It might be good to try that first though: you might max out your tire clearance without even slotting the struts...

Do you have any photos of the slots?

@s0sl0w I'm afraid not, and he's in the process of moving multiple states so I don't think he'll have the opportunity to snap photos anytime really soon. I'll shoot him a text though.

Total time for the alignment, including slotting the struts, was about 2.5 hours. A lot of that time was spent talking to Scott, if he was just working he probably could've done it all in about 1.5 hours.

How much - camber gained from slotting by its self? I know that you can only go so far with the slot before the knuckle starts to make contact and bottom out on the main strut body/tube. Its probably a good idea to leave at least a 1~1.5mm gap between the knuckle and the body.

I had about 1.5* from the bolts, we stopped at -2.2* because of tire/spring perch clearance. There's room to go much further if I had spacers or a different offset wheels.