The end links that came from Sk2 did have a certain amount of adjustment available at either end. When I had it aligned they stated the rears had a neg 3 camber, but could not be adjusted w/o shims/camber bolts. Is it worth the trouble?

 

Second this opinion. I wouldn't lower your car if the roads are that bad. But, I'm glad you were able to get to a decent solution.

 

FitGuy, are you James?

 

Ah, I see - I missed that in the original pictures. Good for Skunk2.

Negative camber isn't the end of the world for tire life - but can make a big improvement in cornering, especially on non double-wishbone suspensions. But toe can really short change you out of a lot of tire life . . . My rears are only lowered an inch, and according to my most recent alignment, toe is positive by .85 degrees on the left, and -.42 degrees on the right. Factory spec is only +/-.20 degrees, so it's off by quite a bit. I'm installing my SPC shims asap, looking to put it back to as close to zero as possible, while at the same time getting both sides up to about 2 degrees of negative camber.

I'd love the same amount of camber on the front, but the SPC bolts aren't completely plug and play - I'm gonna need to grind down some areas of the control arm and suspension before I can install them.

 

I wanted to respond to you earlier but didn't have time with work to devote to a proper post.

I feel your pain and I don't think its any short comings of your installer.

First off, I've gone through exactly what you have. I have another car thats been a pure suspension built car. many many thousands of dollars have gone into it getting custom bits made up and so forth (for something that does not have much in the way of aftermarket), everything was fine and dandy until me and a few others convinced D2 to design some integrated coil-overs for our car Of course being who I am I went with an insane spring rate (11k front, 9k rear. IIRC 4x the stock). AND SAME EXACT THING AS YOU... its like a roller coaster ride, fun as hell and quite scary but after a few minutes you just want to get out. Its all over the god damn road, I'm pretty sure there is an indention on the ceiling metal from my head. I literally threw up on my drive home after installing them.

let me tell you what continuing to ride your car like this is going to turn into... your going to start breaking stuff... sway bar mounts, end links, tie rods. I've even snapped a tire off the car just cruising on normal roads. you'll quickly find all sorts of new weak points and you start getting in the habit of replacing certain parts with every oil change.

I recommend you sell them off and take a small step backwards.

If not heres what you can do in the mean time to mitigate the issues. get 4 point harnesses, it'll keep you out of the roof. put your seat in a proper upright driving position, it does wonders on mitigating the harshness. REMOVE THE SWAY BAR ENDLINKS, when the springs get that stiff the sway bar is completely pointless and you'll gain a bit of roadway stability at speed. If you do choose to keep the sway bar end links, KEEP MORE THAN ONE SPARE SET ON HAND. You will be snapping those like butter, especially at the angle they are being mounted at. Also note that if they snap, there is a chance they will somehow get caught up in the rim and do some pretty nasty damage. Lower your rear so you don't have it raked, you really mess with the suspension geometry and it can have some really funky effects on the road.

My buddy has slowly worked his identical car up to the same suspension build I have and it behaves exactly how my car does not.... difference being is he is quite competitive in SCCA and has 5 years of racing it every weekend. Years of tweaking the setup have made all the difference. You can't get that result taking your car to any shop, they can't help you achieve that. It takes alot of time and experience and road time to properly dial in the car.

Theres a reason these things come with big labels on them that say for off-road use only.