Suspension Help

[GR11M]

My full list of mods is here

This is the current state of the suspensions alignment

What concerns me the most is the front drivers side wheel is noticeably further in than the passenger side. I thought it was the camber but there's little difference between the two. Normally I would jack up the car and try to work it out my self but the weathers way too shitty to do it right now, so I need help from someone who's already got their hands cold and dirty and can tell me what's wrong

How precise do the alignment settings need to be, I've always just gone by the tolerances provided on the paperwork ?

Do the alignment settings provided by Ford ever change ?

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[WD Pro]

Your photos are at noticeably different angles but even accepting that, I agree, there appears to be an obvious camber difference from one side to the other.

Forget the sheet for the moment. Use a spirit level and a steel rule, or a block of wood and a phone app to see if it’s your eye, or the sheet values that are out.

Don’t let the phone sleep from one side to the other, use the wood the same way, have the same side of the phone up against the wood etc etc.

Flip the car around on the drive, use a different place to park the car. At this moment in time don’t worry about the number, just look for some confidence (or not) in either the numbers on the sheet and / or what your eye sees.

If the sheet values are crap, it’s not really worth discussing further until you have values that can be trusted

WD

 

[boB]

Your front camber values look good on paper but the photos show a different story. The next problem is that front camber is not meant to be adjustable. Adjustment requires special bolts (worst choice), grinding the strut (service manual choice), or camber plates ($$).

Next, the front toe appears to be too much, something close to zero is preferred. At least toe is easily adjustable.

 

[GR11M]

I'll have to get out tomorrow and take some measurements, I've got a digital angle finder so I should be able to get a reading in degrees. I'll also get some measurements of the top, middle and bottom of the tyre in comparison to the wheel arch. It's just odd that the readings are similar on paper but there's clearly a big gap on the drivers side.

The stock suspension doesn't have adjustable camber but my aftermarket Pedders coil overs do.

 

[GR11M]

Here's the measurements, the strange thing is the passenger side has more negative camber configured on the shock mount than the drivers side.

Both sides have 9cm from top of the tyre to the arch
DS has a tyre angle of 92.9 degrees and PS 88.1
The entire DS wheel needs to come out by about 1cm - I dunno yet if or how this is going to be possible

 

[WD Pro]

I don’t know if (like the rear) the subframe can be off - that might be worth checking, and also go some way to explaining your strut top settings.

Other than that, I suspect that camber difference will be enough to make a huge difference to what the eye sees. With one side corrected inwards, and the other corrected outwards, it will look totally different than it does now.

Just do a bit of trig and see how much the top of the wheel moves per degree of movement.

Kind of looks like the alignment job wasn’t done so great either - probably not a place worth going back to …

WD

 

[GR11M]

They didn't do an alignment, they only printed off the current settings. I didn't think it was worth having an alignment done if the front DS wheel was still going to be out.

 

[NTXChris]

What wheels do you have on your car? If you're running staggered wheels, is there a possibility that a rear wheel was mounted to one side of the front? I know that with the PP1 GTs, tire shops have mistakenly mounted front wheels on the rear and rears on the front. Could this be a similar scenario here.

If the front subframe was shifted, I'd imagine the camber differences side to side would be greater than they are.

 

[raptor17GT]

it possible that the steering rack hasn't been centred and thus one side is longer than it should be thus the other side sticks out * this is a far left field thought likely better to have kept to myself

is the bodywork actually centred, wings / bumper etc. Any front end work that would have not put things back quite as they should be ?

 

[MarkM]

That’s a camber issue, rack, different wheels etc don’t alter camber. Need taken to a decent place for alignment to get to the bottom of it

 

[WD Pro]

Not that you would want to, but making your right side camber the same as your left, would bring the top of the wheel out by about 21mm.

I would hazard a guess that if you corrected the camber and made it identical on both sides, it would look pretty damn even …

Now if correcting the camber has a concerning difference in your strut top camber adjustment setting (or the position of the strut in the tower hole), then that would point to some subframe misalignment issues (assuming we can rule out the cars been pranged).

WD

 

[GR11M]

Wheels are correct 305 rears and 275 front.

From what I can see, with no access to a lift, everything else looks straight.

The camber isn't the issue, there's a slight difference between each side but the whole DS wheel looks about 1cm further in. I think it may have happened when I installed new coil overs in August.

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