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?