Alignment, LCA, UCA Questions

[itsdjk_]

Hello,

Been doing some research recently regarding alignment, lower control arms, and upper control arms and had some questions.

So, about 3 months ago, I had installed the Tein Flex Z coilovers. When installing I didn't mess with any height settings or the dampening. Now, that I've put some miles on the car since, I am noticing that my rear driver side of the car has more camber than the passenger side. It's noticeable to the eye when standing behind the car. I don't have any other suspension mods put into the car as of the moment, so not sure what causes this unevenness?

So, I began looking into controls arms. Found that most people use LCA for camber adjustments. But, from what I hear the bushings on the heim joints are very prone to getting dirty and destroyed in a few months due to the fact that they are exposed. Would this be the case even in areas like SoCal with no salt roads/harsh weather conditions?

Then looked into UCA and learned that they are more costly and harder to adjust.

I am looking to raise the car in height by about 0.5" all around from what the factory Tein's were set to. Then would like somewhere around -2F-1.5R of camber and fix this uneven camber I currently have.. Not sure where to go with this.
Would just going into an alignment shop without any control arms and attempting to do height adjustment and corner balancing fix my problems and potentially get me close to the numbers I want?

I apologize for the lengthy post. Pretty new to this stuff.

[Racecomp Engineering]

I would not use exposed spherical bearings on a year-round daily driver here in Maryland. Probably okay in SoCal, but I've never lived there.

Cusco LCAs use little rubber booties to protect the bearings so we commonly recommend them. I use them on my car because of snow/salt and I rallycross. Others options are lighter and/or have more adjustment, but you may have to replace the bearings more often.

With OEM rear LCAs at a 1 inch drop you'll be around -2.0 or more rear camber which is the right neighborhood. It is often uneven though as you've noticed.

SPC is a cheap rear LCA that uses a sealed rear bushing of some type.

- Andrew

[EndlessAzure]

Did you ever get the car aligned after installing coilovers? That would be the place to start, and usually advised when you do any major suspension mods.

Any un-evenness is the result of how the car is aligned (or taken out of alignment when swapping suspension parts) and whether the car sits at the same height/has the same weight distribution on all 4 wheels. More weight/lower height means more camber as the car squats due to suspension geometry

With car corner balancing, an equal left-to-right rear camber should be achievable with the very limited factory adjustability range if you have a diligent mechanic, given that there isn't any damage or gross un-evenness with your car. However, the resulting camber will pretty much just be the natural camber from how your car sits. At between -1 to -1.5 inches of lowering, that is anywhere between -2.3 to -2.7 deg.

However if you have a specific camber setting that you want and/or if you want avoid the risk of having to go back twice to dial in an alignment, rear LCA is all you need.

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Finally, you mention what the Teins were set to out-of-the-box. There is no guarantee that the coilovers were set in any specific way, especially with the jostling about that occurs during shipping. When you refer to the "Tein Factory Setting," it's only valid if you set them up per the initial collar measurements in the manual

[strat61caster]

+1 check that your ride height/spring perch collars haven't slipped out of adjustment, it happens and they need to be checked regularly and could be causing the camber in one corner if it's lowered itself.

You will need rear lcas to dial in the camber you want, if you're ok being off by a few tenths or half a degree then save the money, if that's not ok then don't waste time going to an alignment shop without them, period, all they can adjust is toe.

Looks like flex Z don't come with camber adjustment, get camber bolts up front to hit -2, there's a few good alignment FAQs floating around here, Google them.

[churchx]

Flex Z have own camberplates for front. Not that common at lowest budgets, but one of bits that rise their relative value.
Still LCAs for gain camber rear adjustment advisable. Of course, even with uneven camber car will be driveable, but as this car is often bought for driving/handling feel, average owners might be less forgiving to alignment quirk illeffects unlike in some big family hauler SUVs.

[86MLR]

I've got Superpro adjustable LCA which came with adjustable toe arms, typical to SPC and the whiteline ones, I've not had a issue and the price was right.

I'm not a fan of rose (helm) joints for a DD.

[itsdjk_]

Thank you everyone for the input! Just ended up ordering some SPL LCAs. Just gonna get the car aligned with those.

Seems like the concern with bearings for the heim joints dying out quick isn't necessarily a big concern in SoCal and replacements seems to be pretty cheap.