I recently hit a curb pretty hard with my rear left wheel. I replaced the wheel and both rear tires (overdue) and brought it to Goodyear for an alignment.

They said that they found no damage from the curb, but due to wear and tear, they were unable to get the alignment back to spec, but that it was close enough.

To be fair, I don't track the car and probably wouldn't know the difference, but it just bothers me anyway, especially the rear camber, which is pretty different....
"=" just separates L and R so it's not confused with a negative.

this is before the alignment:

Front
Camber: -.97 = .12
Caster: 6.22 = 6.63
Toe: -.91 = .78

Rear
Camber: .07 = -1.03
Toe: 2.31 = .08


After alignment:

Front
Camber: -.58 = -.45
Caster: 6.22 = 6.63
Toe: -.05 = .00

Rear
Camber: -.43 = -1.58
Toe: .35 = .28

Is this just a crappy alignment job, or is it possible that that's as good as it gets on a car that's now about 8 years old with 80k miles on it?

 

You most likely have a bent lower control arm. It's possible to have one bent enough to cause alignment problems and still look ok to a visual inspection. Measure it, and I'd bet money it's bent.

 

I don't know the factory specs for the actual numbers or the allowable differences between left and right sides, but that difference of more than 1

 

They gave me the factory spec ranges (what they use, I can't confirm that it's what Honda uses).

Rear camber should be between -1.33 and -1.67



For RC, I only race electric. I have:

Losi CR buggy
Losi MF2 Truck (mostly retired, hoping to sell)
GenX 1/12 carpet knife

And a modified Traxxas Slash for bashing.

I used to have a 1/10 touring car, but I sold it and decided to start racing 1/12 instead.

My slash is my favorite right now because I haven't been racing and I don't like to bash my race cars outside.

 

Wow, that is definately off. Sounds like you had a bad alignment and you most likely have something bent. They shouldnt have sent you home telling you everything was OK. Do yourself a favor and take it to a real shop. My alignment guy gets all the settings spot on!!

John

 

Thanks for the tips, guys. Like I said, I'm not too picky but from playing with RC cars, I know that 1 degree of camber makes a difference, so to be that different from left to right just seems like a half-assed job so I thought I'd ask.

 

Here's what the service manual says; angle unit conversions in parentheses by the author

Front camber angle: -0

 

It helps... but it tells me that I probably have something bent. I'll probably just leave it for now and worry about getting it right when I find a new job.


If you haven't raced in a while, you've missed out on the new generation of electronics. Li-Po batteries and brushless motors make nitro kind of useless. People still race them, but mostly it's just because they like the noise and fumes.

 

Yeah, definitely seems like something's bent. Hopefully you won't need all three of the main rear suspension components. Lower arm is ~$250, upper arm is ~$170, and the toe control link is ~$50. GL

 

That was a pretty crappy alignment job you got there. If they are unable to align it properly they need to tell you why, thats part of an alignment. "Wear and tear" is total bs and the only reason they said that is because their alignment tech took 30 seconds to try and figure out the problem but couldn't. Oh and by the way that alignment is out of spec on rear cross camber (did they give you a print out from the alignment?). Its also possible that the rear subframe has shifted to the right in the impact but its probably more likely that something bent. I wouldn't go to that shop again.