Adjustable Suspension/Alignment FAQ
 

From factory this FRS/BRZ lack camber adjustment in both the front and rear of the car. This thread is to outline the options for gaining camber adjustment (and more in time) with some of the differences in the varying options. I am in no way an expert. I have simply spent a lot of time trying not to screw up my own car and see questions related to this info asked often and people getting tired of repeating themselves. Also please note if you race in SCCA/NASA/86Cup/etc some items are limited based on class. I did my best to list legal parts for SCCA Solo 2 but am the not governing body so double check. Please do your research before purchasing on what is legal and what isn’t. All adjustment ranges are approximate and vary from car to car.

If you feel like there is something missing please PM me or post and mention me in this thread so I can add it if I think it is needed.

I am in no way responsible for any damage you do to your own car based on your choices regarding the topics in this thread. I also do not endorse any companies listed or vouch that they make quality products. Do your own research and always have a licensed mechanic perform installs and adjustments.

Front camber:


Camber bolts: Camber bolts are a cheap, easy way to gain adjustable camber in the front of the car. They do not have the range of camber plates but are enough for many (up to +/-2.5 degrees possibly). There are a few options for camber bolts.

OEM aka crash bolts (Toyota SU003-02818; Subaru 901000394): This is a 14mm bolt that replaces the 16mm bolt in the upper hole on your strut. It is able to take the torque needed to tighten with enough force to not slip since it is smaller than the hole it is inserted in. Adjustment is done by moving the strut in or out changing the camber and then tightening. While I can’t find specific numbers this bolt tends to add approximately between +/- .5 to 1 degree camber. This bolt is the same as the factory bolt in the lower hole on your stock struts. CS legal camber adjustment

SPC 81280 or Whiteline KCA416 : It is a 16mm eccentric bolt installed in the upper strut hole. This bolt has a lobe that adjusts the strut angle by rotating the bolt when installed. Adds approximately +/- 1.5 degree camber. Whiteline bolt is a repackaged SPC bolt listed first.

SPC 81305 or 81260: This is a 14mm eccentric camber bolt that is installed in the lower hole. This bolt has a lobe that adjusts the strut angle by rotating the bolt when installed. Adds approximately +/- 1.75 degrees camber.



Pro-tip: If you install 14mm eccentric bolts in the lower strut hole, you now have a "spare" OEM crash bolt. Swap the OEM bottom bolt into the top strut hole for greater adjustability. This is how to achieve upwards of -2.5 on stock struts with just camber bolts.

Adjustable top mounts aka camber plates: Camber plates provide a much wider range of adjustment over camber bolts. They also replace the oem rubber top mounts and often are made of only metal (few exceptions like the Whiteline Com-C). While this has handling benefits as you eliminate slop it can add to NVH. Camber plates cost a few hundred dollars compared to under $40 for camber bolts. Depending on how they are designed some camber plates may raise/lower ride height slightly. Some camber plates also include caster adjustment as well.

Some companies that make camber plates for the twins:
Beatrush
Ground Control
HVT (no longer in business)
Racecomp Engineering
Raceseng
Velox/FT86Speed Factory
Whiteline

Front lower control arms:


Racer X adjustable front lower control arms. These have both camber and caster adjustment. The standard range of adjustment is approximately +1 to -4 degrees camber. Caster adjustment is the full range until contact is made front or rear in the wheel well. An extended version is available for up to -6 degrees camber and custom set-ups are available up to -18 degrees of camber :eyebulge:

Parts Shop Max have front control arms as well. It appears to only be sold as a full front kit with tie rods, adjustable knuckles, etc. Meant for extreme steering angle.

Powerflex PFF69-801G: FLCA rear bushing that claims to adjust camber +/- 1 degree




Rear Camber


Rear Camber Bolts: While not confirmed on H&R's website as fitting the Zx6 chassis users have reported using H&R TC112 camber bolts in the rear struts upper hole to gain =/- .5 degrees camber. Minimal cost for minimum gain that could possibly even out if mismatched too greatly side to side. These are eccentric so as always be sure to check for slippage

Rear lower control arms (LCA): Adjustable LCAs are a relatively cheap and simple for gaining adjustable camber in the rear. There are many options with various adjustments and bushing types. Some also will have multiple mounting locations for swaybars to help tweak other handling characteristics as well. The downside to LCAs is camber changes done here will affect toe as well.

Some companies that offer adjustable LCA:
Agency Power
Blox
Buddy Club
Cusco
DME
GT Spec
ISC
Megan
Parts Shop Max
Racer X (STX legal config available)
RSR (STX legal)
SPC (STX legal With DiF bushing installed)
SPL
Stance
Voodoo13
Velox (STX legal config available)
Whiteline (STX legal)

Rear Upper control arm (UCA): Expensive and limited choices, but allows for wider range of camber adjustment compared to other options and changes are independent of toe.

Some companies that offer adjustable UCA:
MSI
Racer X

Rear UCA bushings: These are the cheapest option in terms of purchasing cost. However, they offer limited adjustment ( approximately +/- .75 degrees) and also usually require a shop to install them as an air hammer and press are required to remove the old bushings. These are also an extreme PITA to adjust so your alignment guy might start to hate you. They do however really tighten up the rear end with a harder compound bushing. Non-adjustable versions are also available.

Companies that offer adjustable upper control arm bushings:
Whiteline (STX legal)
Powerflex




Toe

Toe can be adjusted from factory and has a large enough adjustment range for most vehicles that are not running crazy camber and/or are slammed. There are however options for adjustable toe links in the rear and a few options for aftermarket outer tie rods in the front. Outer tie rods also can help with bump steer correction on lowered vehicles.

Some companies that offer adjustable outer tie rods:
Parts Shop Max
Racer X
SPL

Some companies that offer adjustable rear toe arms:
Cusco
DME
FT86SpeedFactory
Megan
Parts Shop Max
Racer X
SPL
SPC
Voodoo13
Whiteline




Useful threads regarding alignment and suspension:

Alignment FAQ
@Dezoris outlines factory specs and many questions to think about before buying, before the alignment, and for when the alignment is actually done. Great read and what kinda inspired me to put this together. I just felt it was missing some of the things like what adjusts what and options beyond his personal experiences and set-up.

CSG and RCE tag-team suspension Q&A thread! Ask us anything!
Read this. The whole thing. You will learn a ridiculous amount about the handling of this car and suspension in general.

Basic tech info: spring rates, rear suspension, motion ratios, and you.
Intro to some suspension theory from the guys at RCE

Alignment settings are based on a lot of factors – driver style/skill, what can you adjust, springs rates, sway bars, tire grip, car use, etc. The best way to check you alignment is to watch tire wear and use a pyrometer to ensure the tires are heating evenly across the whole width. If they aren’t you are not using the whole tire and therefore not using them to their full ability and efficiency. Below are some general starting points to reference depending on the type of driving.

Camber: As you turn the car rolls causing weight to be placed on the outside edge of the inside tire. To combat this you need negative camber so that when you are turning and it matters most the whole tire is in contact with the ground evenly. In general more grip equals the need for more camber. You gain negative camber through lowering as well as under compression but most of the time this is not enough. Also, since we have a McPherson strut set-up this car naturally understeers and running more front camber than rear helps combat this as well as create better turn in. It should be noted that camber is dynamic and changes while driving so it is something that needs to be taken into account and discussed with a professional (i.e. your local performance alignment shop, CSG, RCE, etc).
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g9...psesvj0jj5.jpg

Toe: Toe affects different things front and rear. Front toe out helps with turn in but can sacrifice some stability at high speeds in a straight line. Rear toe in can help with straight line stability at speeds as well as under breaking since the tires are both fighting to center assisting against wandering. Toe increases tire wear more than camber and should be adjusted in low increments if you want to maintain good tire wear. It should be noted that toe is dynamic and changes while driving so it is something that needs to be taken into account and discussed with a professional (i.e. your local performance alignment shop, CSG, RCE, etc).
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g9...pssy9haifv.jpg

Caster: coming soon
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g9...pswcowjhe6.jpg



OEM Specs
Camber
-0.8 to 0.8 front
-2 to -0.5 rear

Toe
-0.12 to 0.12 front
-0.04 to 0.2 rear

Caster
5.2 to 6.7 front

Spirited driving alignment baseline
Camber
-2 to -2.5 front
-1.5 to -2 rear

Toe
Zero all around



Note: Competitive auto-x and track alignments tend to run much more aggressive but is very tire and driver dependent so I have removed those settings. Especially since I do not have much experience in that realm. A pyrometer to ensure even temp across the tire is the only way to know if your track alignment is optimized

Final Thoughts:

Even for a DD alignment is important. Factory specs are broad and most places only care that all the numbers are in the green and not what they actually are. Handling matters in emergency breaking situations so having something that is set correctly is important to everyone. Not to mention .2 toe in may not be great for tire wear with you -2 camber.

Find a reputable alignment shop. Know what specs you are looking for and can achieve with your set-up. Make sure the shop can work with those settings and your parts. Check the alignment before its off the rack and always get a final printout when done.

A FAQ on how to search would have been more useful. 99% of questions asked on here could have an answer if someone typed "How to lower scion frs" in google and the first results would be about 69 threads from this site, with more than enough info in at least have of them.

There's a thread on that. It didn't help. I know this may be a little spoon fed but I really liked that they had a ton of these threads on NASIOC for the Subi crowd. They are really helpful to have this basic info in one place for new guys.

And I'm tired of answering people with LMGTFY links and while I'm sure this won't stop people from posting the same thread for the 18485772 time I wanted to give it a shot. As it grows maybe it will be helpful enough to be a sticky even.

Good job, I would ask for a TL;DR (my new thing it seems) however I know enough about this sort of thing I dont think reading it will teach me much. Nice to have this so we can just link people to it though! :cheers:

Add Racer-X to the LCA list as well please, aside from Velox they're the only other currently available off-the-shelf SCCA STX class legal LCA. But not worth listing that level of detail, people should be responsible enough to verify the rules on their own components.

Also note that the ranges of adjustment are approximate especially on the camber bolts, the shop told me they were only able to get about -0.8 degrees of additional camber out of my 16mm eccentric bolt (Whiteline KCA416) just so you don't get kids mad the shop 'screwed me and only got me to -1.5'

And the KW/RCE struts are slotted to allow for even more camber on the front, maybe others idk.

Great job. :)

- andrew

Just thought I'd note – it appears HVT is no longer around (which sucks because I have no more customer support should I need it). Their webpage (hvtauto.com) is long gone and now redirects to a inactive Facebook page. An address is listed, but no phone number or email.

theres an app for that... now i can say

Yes, theres a thread for that.

Good job finch

You wanna make one of these for every component? That'd be great kthxbye

imho for this to be stickied it should be a bit more extensive. As in components listed in table with marks if STX legal or not or available in both configurations or no data. Yes, certainly everyone should be able to verify by themselves if component fits by rules, but if info in thread will help saving time for few hundred of users, is it sin to not make those hundreds each and every to redo information search and reading lot of product descriptions/class rules/many threads of lot of pages with lot of noise in them too?
Few more bits worth adding:
- why alignment is worth doing for everybody (with reference of broad stock ranges to even new and completely stock car), not just trackday junkies
- few generic camber/toe number sets advisable for street/mixed/track
- maybe also link to some DIY alignment thread?

This is all easily available information if you search google..

Alignment importance
General alignment specs, with tons of results
DIY Alignment

All of this was found within seconds of using some basic search terms. If people didn't want to be spoon fed, then they'd do the legwork for themselves. Instead, we have people who want to coddle new/inexperienced members, instead of encouraging them to do some research on their own.

Haha. I just might. Nasioc has one of the greatest FAQ lists on every part basically and its great for newbies. Im not that knowledgeable but could see this expanding

Thats kind of the idea, however I dont have all the info myself. I know some basics but not everything. hoping to gain more info and go from there. Also trying to decide how much info is too much. Coilovers vs Springs. since drop has an effect and all coils are different (independant ride height or not, slotted struts, etc). Also why only STX? That is my class and I know it but don't know the other classes really. I would like there to be a one stop shop for all this though so thanks for the feedback. I'll start adding little by little and see where it goes.

You don't agree with the thread. Great. Don't view it. But thanks for the bumps.

K Thanks Bye

Well, given that the only info you have in here is about camber, is that the only alignment spec that matters? What about toe? What about caster?

But, I'll GTFO, prez. I'm sure that'll keep your feels intact.

:clap: damn good job finch

GG

Added general settings and discussion to 2nd post. STX/CS legal notes added to first post

Adjustable Suspension FAQ
 

Rear gains negative camber under compression. Front gains negative camber under compression to a point and then begins gaining positive camber.

This is right at the beginning of the CSG/RCE thread.

And thats why I was trying to limit what I posted lol. Deleted camber/toe info until later

I only skimmed it, but the rest made sense to me. It's like in school, just make sure what you write is accurate and well-sourced (hah, shit, school was good for something).

You didn't reserve enough posts...

If it gets that long then this will get broken up into more threads.

Reserved.

I know of google power, i use it myself as great problem solver timesaver in many areas. But i also know many people that are not that comfortable with computers, are not that good narrowing down search terms for best hits to turn out quick enough, not burried among pages of noise, commercial advertisements, misinformation. You prefer to be elitist pointing importance of learning computers on car forum. I .. i valued a lot help that i got from threads like steve99's bolt on guide, several threads by RCE on suspension and alikes. They were great starting points covering basics, answering most of my potential questions, introducing terms and things i didn't even knew about and wouldn't know what to google for :P. And disliked cases where i had to dig out information not covered in such guides in many threads (yes, including found by google) of 100+ pages with at most 10% somewhat valuable content that was drown among offtopic / contradicting / trolling and so on posts. I valued that help and applaud efforts of others continuing this trend of helping newbies. I won't go to carmeet or trackday and tell people that want to ask something from me to go home to their computers or to bring out their smarthpones or pads and start googling themselves, it will not make me feel better/superior/enjoying myself doing this way. Friendly chatter/help - will.

And just as finch1750 pointed out. There are very good FAQ threads on nasioc. Several times when not finding quickly information here, threads from there (yes, including found via google) helped me instead. Would love to see more of such on this forum aswell.

Added info on toe adjustment parts to first post as well as lower front control arms (does anyone have more info on the Racer X piece? like range of adjustment?)

Also added imagese to the camber/caster/toe explanations in the second post

You forgot to cover things like roll center adjustment, and camber ball joints for the rear.

Also you should add Part Shop Max to all the different parts as they make all the arms as well.

I think RCAs and ball joints would go more in a discussion with springs/coils/lowering then here. Could be that I still need to find a better title for this. I would just say alignment FAQ but that is another (shorter) thread with not as much basic info imo

and Parts Shop Max parts will be added right after this post is made.

Really? I didn't know that. Do you know what point the neg camber increases? Are we into bump stops at that point?

Wish I could tell you where that transition point is though it only seems to matter when you start talking about changing geometry by lowering. That said, once you hit the bump stops, you're effectively not compressing the suspension anymore.

I'd be willing to bet that it's stupid low and not something anyone should be worrying about

This was covered a while ago, I can't remember the thread at the moment, but the result was (paraphrasing here) the tire would have to be poking up out of the fender before you start gaining positive camber.

Are those front LCAs stx legal? It looks like they use bushings instead of heim joints.

I don't know myself. I have not seen any stx build include front lca and I dont know enough about the front lcas to say. If you find out let me know and I can update the thread here if they are. Maybe ask in the STX sticky

Bump this as there have been a few posts where this may have helped. Will also be updating with some caster adjustment stuff soon.


Any other updates/new parts I may have missed?

Thanks for this thread to steer me in the right direction

Updated with H&R rear camber bolts and Powerflex RUCA adjustable bushings

It seems after some research that there is a mix of people using the SPC 81305 in the bottom vs. the top. After asking FT86speedfactory, they recommend using it in the top, but the SPC website seems to say use in the bottom.

Is there really just no consensus on if the 81305 goes in top or bottom?

81305 is designed for use in lower, 14mm hole. Some may use it in upper, 16mm hole, but imho it may compromise a bit reliability of mount, as to not slip it probably will need to be tightened past reasonable torque value (as even with lobe it will still be smaller then upper hole diameter, and you can with same success use any regular 12mm bolt there with same "more" adjustment and with same reduced mount strength).

Use 81305 in lower hole, and KCA416 (81280) in upper, as it's meant to be. Yes, 81305 may net slightly more range in upper hole, but if you need even more camber then what two sets of proper sized camberbolts used in holes they were designed to can net, you'd be better off netting extra additional camber using other means, eg. lca offset bushing or offset topmount or camberplate, to accompany camberbolts.

Thank you for the quick response.
Personally, I am hesitant to use both the 83105 and the KCA416 (81280) due to slippage/reliability concerns from using two eccentric bolts at the same time. I have the a similar reliability concern with using the OEM bottom bolt in the top. Maybe unfounded but it still makes me uneasy.