Hello everyone,

I would like to pick your brain for a minute on a scenario I have going on. To start off, I daily a 2000 ap1 on GC coilovers and some random eBay brand as adjustable front upper control arms. The car is lowered about 1" from OEM (previous owner had mixed match eBay coilovers slammed). The car could have been in either a small accident or hit a curb on the driver fender side, still a clean title and frame looks good. Since I had the car, there has been no issue with the car pulling to the left or right.

So a few weeks back, I was getting vibration under accelaration on the turnpike. I jacked up the car, and I noticed my rear passenger tire was really bald in the middle, still had thread on the sides (i figure too much air, I could be wrong). I took the car to get an alignment. The guy doing the alignment mentioned my driver side control arm ball joint was stripped. So I figured, perfect time to replace with OEM control arms. I didn't get new OEM ones because it was out of my price range so I got an aftermarket replacement. Now, my driver side camber is way off and the guy says there's nothing that can be done, unless I get adjustable front UCAs or take it to a chassis shop to try and straighten out whatever could be causing this.

My question to you is, 1) take it to another shop and recheck the alignment, 2) take it to a chassis shop to get it inspected/straightened out, 3) possible bent knuckle (from what I read could be a culprit) or 4) just go back to adjustable front UCAs?

Right now, my front driver side camber is at -2.9 deg and passenger is at -0.3 deg. I was planning to reach out to Andres at Kab Customs as well.

Sorry for the long read and Thanks

 

Sounds like the car was hit up front, and something is bent. If it were my car, and not my daily driver, I'd take everything apart in the front suspension and compare each item from one to the other. Either that, or you could take it to a collision shop who could check if the frame is bent, or if the subframe is damaged. I'd absolutely fix the problem, and not go back to some adjustable control arm. I'd be willing to bet either something is wrong with the subrame, lower control arm, or knuckle. Good luck man.