I have Tein Flex's and have had my car aligned before by island brake and alignment. I asked them to make it 0 all the way around. When I picked up my car they said they couldn't make it 0 all the way around and that they made it close to factory specs as possible.

Now I notice that I am getting uneven wear on my KDW's and I am wondering if I should get it aligned again?

Also In addition to my alignment question should I adjust the screws on the top of my suspension all to 0? If I do this will this will this cause problems for me getting my car set to 0 all the way around?

What will adjusting the screws on the top of the suspension do?

How do I know that the screws are aligned to 0?

What places do you recommend to have my car realigned at?

What type of pricing can I expect?

Island brake is $80

Jon

 

I think Pacific Automotive & Performance is in the $100-110 range and they're pretty cool. From my experiences they try to give you the settings you want.

I've heard funny things from several people about Island Brake...... What do you think about them Steve???

 

Jon,
Where exactly are you getting the uneven wear? Front,back, inside or outside?

 

on the inside of the tires... I wouldn't be able to tell you which side since I rotate them every so often...

 

DAMN that's expensive... but if they give you what you want... I guess you cannot complain...

where are they located?

what about the suspension screws on the top?

Jon

 

0 what? Toe or Camber? I assume you are shooting for 0 camber. 0 toe is definitely possible but getting 0 camber may not be especially since your car is probably lowered quite a bit. Chances are that your car is lowered so much that the static camber is -2 or more degrees. You might want to install some camber adjustment kit or crash bolts to get it back to the original settings. The crash bolts can only be used in the front from what I gather.

The screw on the top is the damping adjuster. I am not sure what type of setting is optimal for an AWD but I would assume that setting the rears stiffer than the front would make the car more neutral and favor oversteer. However, I don't know for sure. $100+ is a bit much for an alignment. I usually pay $75 and that is the most you want to pay.

 

yeah, I mean 0 chamber... or as close to 0 all around for everything...

I have chamber bolds on the rear already and I don't know what crash bolts are...

I am not talking about the damper of the suspension.. I'm talking about the 4 alan wrench bolts on the top of the pollow mounts of the tein flex suspension.

also my car isn't slammed. it's just lowered due to the tein flex suspension.

my tireware is on the inside of the tire as if I have some negative chamber. If you look at 16" KDW tread pattern the whole inside tread block up to the first split in the tread patter is bald.


Jon

 

I am having trouble finding a good pic of the tops of the Tein flexes but if they have a slot on it (like the image below), you don't want to mess with it as it will affect the camber.



If that is the case and the strut is pushed as outboard as possible then it is true that the techs could not get it to 0 camber. But if the strut top is midway through then I would go back and have them readjust it or get your money back. That is because there is still a lot of adjustment to make it 0 camber.

CRASH BOLTS are eccentric bolts that go on the bottom of the strut. They can be rotated to give more/less camber. I believe that they are called crash bolts because cars that crash and need to be realigned often lose their range of adjustment. So these bolts give added adjustability.

 

yes I have a slit in them and no I don't think they were touched at the time of alignement. I got my aligment a while ago from island brake by the way. I don't think they'll realign my car after all this time.

Also the chamber adjustment things on the top of the chamber plates are set to how tein had them when I received the suspension.

I have chamber bolts already installed.

what do you think? should I move them all the way out? I'll take picture of what my chamber plates look like.

Jon

 

damn... after looking at them it seems as that they are all the way out or very close to it

Jon

 

Ask San how Pacific Automotive did on his car he hasn't said anyhting bad about it and they set it to what he wanted..

 

They're on Queen St. near on the downtown side of Ward Ave. With the adjustable pillowballs that come with flexes plus the stock camber bolts I think you can probably get pretty close to 0 degrees camber if you wanted...especially if its not too low.

If you're getting a lot of wear you might have a problem with toe rather than camber. Thats the real killer......and I know my Toe was way out after lowering.

 

damn.. that sucks!

any way to correct a toe problem besides cutting it off... heheeh LOL...

no seriously how do you correct that problem?

I don't think I'm that low... my front wheel gap is about 2.5 fingers and my rear is 1~1.5 fingers stacked on top of each other

Jon

 

Are they toed in or out either way they will only have to adjust the tie rods. Which ever way they need to go...

 

how can I tell which way is toe in or toe out?

Jon