WTF? i need some help. quick.

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invisibledemon

invisibledemon

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ok. i worked on my car all fucking weekend.

i replaced:
upper control arms,
tie rod ends
lower ball joints
installed an ingalls camber kit.
drivers side axle
springs
struts
rotors and pads.

now it rides worse than ever,
i know i cant get the tires perfectly stright by eye, so i know that it needs to be aligned. but it doesnt appear to be too far off. the tires are reasonably straight with each other.
but i may be mistaken bc i get this horrible squeall from both tires even going straight.
it handles really really bad. everything is tight, and has the cotter pins in place.
it basically goes where it wants too.

im sore as hell, and tired.
this is pissing me off so bad. any suggestions? im gonna have a tech at my work to check it out, see if he can find anything that i may have missed. but i cant think of what it could be.
 
bearings should be fine. didnt touch them at all. and the gaurds are no where near them. i checked that numerous times bc i thought i had bent them at one point. but they were clear.
 
Well, you can try jacking up the car and spinning each of the wheels to see if you get the same noise and then go from there. It sounds to me from reading your first post that your front tires are toed out which would make your car feel very unstable & want to veer back and forth not holding a straight line. If it's far enough out then you would probably get a squeal from the tires as well.

You can get the alignment close with a tape measure and see if that helps the problem at all. Just pick a tread block on the front of each front tire & measure the distance across, and measure from the same places across the back of the tire. Adjust your tie rod ends and try to get it to where the front & back measurements are even and you'll be reasonably close to 0" toe. Hopefully that will fix the issues you're having and then you can have it aligned by a shop.
 
that helps and i will try that today.

im thinking that i may have not tightened the upper control arms enough and its causing it to go up too far. so im gonna jack it up and try that. i plan on getting an alignment soon though. i got to figure out if its gonna fit on the alignment rack at work. theres a shop locally that specializes in aligning lower cars, they do alot of lambos and such. so i may have to go there and fork out the money.
 
heres a few resources for how to do you own alignment
Sheldon's DIY Miata Alignment Page
http://home.comcast.net/~jkrane/suspension_university/susp401.html
K-Series.com - The Honda and Acura K Motor Solution

ive done it... its not difficult and you get a far better alignment than you will at most shops (as long as you take your time and double check your accuracy)
it takes several hours the first time... but it gets easier as you go... i can do my car in a little over 2 hours

leveling the car is important to getting proper measurements
finding the centerline of the car is crucial
beyond that its simply a matter of double checking your measurements
"slip plates" help a lot and greatly reduce frustration

google "DIY alignment"
there are shit tons of how to articles out there

this is not a hack-job alignment either
this is how almost all track cars are aligned (most track cars have a rig built for them that mounts directly to the car saving them from having to find center and measure out parallel lines... Smart Strings Four Wheel Alignment Set)
when set up properly you can get a far more accurate alignment than you ever will from some $8/hour jackass at the local tire/muffler shop with his beat the hell up non calibrated POS $$$$$$$ laser alignment rack (i use to be one of those jackasses and used one of those high dollar racks.... i still used the string box on my own car) that rack is meant to alow a low experienced, hourly paid tech to push out alignments as fast as possible with "good enough" accuracy

i always took my time doing alignments with that shitty setup and still had to redo about 20% of the cars because after the machine said they were perfect the alignment was worse than when the car showed up
 
E_SolSi said:
this is not a hack-job alignment either
this is how almost all track cars are aligned (most track cars have a rig built for them that mounts directly to the car saving them from having to find center and measure out parallel lines... Smart Strings Four Wheel Alignment Set)
when set up properly you can get a far more accurate alignment than you ever will from some $8/hour jackass at the local tire/muffler shop with his beat the hell up non calibrated POS $$$$$$$ laser alignment rack (i use to be one of those jackasses and used one of those high dollar racks.... i still used the string box on my own car) that rack is meant to alow a low experienced, hourly paid tech to push out alignments as fast as possible with "good enough" accuracy

i always took my time doing alignments with that shitty setup and still had to redo about 20% of the cars because after the machine said they were perfect the alignment was worse than when the car showed up
Click to expand...


i'll check that out. like i said one of two places will be doing it for me, either a tech at my work, not an 8/hr prick that has no experience. but a real tech that knows what hes doing. or the shop that specializes in it. they do nothing but alignments, no tech work just the alignments. people trailor their shit to bring it to them bc they cant fit cars that sit 1inch off the ground onto their machine.

but im stuck currently. it would have to fucking rain today. sunny and cloud free all weekend, and rain today.
tried to drive back to my mothers house (where all of my tools are) and made it down the street a little ways, scared the shit out of me. zero control. left then right, while holding the steering wheel stright.
 
it's deffinately your alignment.
I just did similar work on my car and I thought I had it 'eyeballed' pretty close and when I was driving it over to "Jeff The Alignment Guy" I just about crapped my pants... as soon as he was done with it, I couldn't believe that I had actually done my work correctly and that the alignment was making it handle that bad.

get a proper alignment from a reputable alignment shop like you said and not from Midas or tiresplus or any of that BS
 
seanjuan said:
it's deffinately your alignment.
I just did similar work on my car and I thought I had it 'eyeballed' pretty close and when I was driving it over to "Jeff The Alignment Guy" I just about crapped my pants... as soon as he was done with it, I couldn't believe that I had actually done my work correctly and that the alignment was making it handle that bad.

get a proper alignment from a reputable alignment shop like you said and not from Midas or tiresplus or any of that BS
Click to expand...


same experience? damn, ive had cars that were shit out of alignment but its never been this bad. going down the road holding the wheel perfectly striaght, it was swaying left to right.
 
well, i think i have it figured out for the most part.

i finaly got to my moms house, after a scary ass fucking guessing game of "will i stay on the road" 25mph the whole way.

but i got it on jack stands, and tapped the camber kit a few times with a hammer, and it moved, hence the swaying problem i have. hopefully that shoud be the main of it.
 
cv14500 said:
invisibledemon ,

You should bring it to a mechanic that can fix it so that it dosen't ride crapy and drives nice
Click to expand...


read the post. i stated that i plan on having it looked at. either by a tech at my work or the alignment shop that only does alignment. i just gotta get it to the point of which it can make it there. im pretty confident in my skills of turning of a wrench. like i stated in my last post, im prety sure its the camber kit thats kicking my ass right now.
i appreciate your input but you should really read the whole thing.
 
does anybody else have any exp with the ingalls camber kit?

im relatively sure that that is the problem im having. everything is tight, and when i have it jacked up nothing moves at all. doesnt budge. but when i start going down the road i have to fight hard to keep the goddamn thing straight. feels like the camber kit is just going side to side. its killing me. and i cant miss work again.

it wouldnt be that bad except that its suopposed to rainall fucking week. and i cant control the car enough to go any fucking where.
 
Is it the kit that replaces the mounts on the sides of the control arms? I used them before and had problems too, but not exactly like what you're having. Mine would make really bad knocking sounds every time I hit a bump & sounded like my frond end was falling off. I don't like them very much..
 
I've never really had a problem with those before.. I put a set in a friend's Accord and they were solid. Never had any issues with them moving around or anything.
 
fuck. this is bullshit. replace all this shit to get a better ride and more control and it 100x's worse now. i could deal if it wasnt raining but i cant go anywhere. i guess im gonna try putting the stock balljoints back in and see what that does for me.
 
Make marks on them with whiteout/sharpie or something and drive it down the street & see if they moved at all.. maybe that might help.
 
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