When my TL gets lovells super lows or Kings Lows (not fully decided yet) and KYB shocks, what amount of camber or caster (are they the same thing?) adjusting would I usually require?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure of the specs needed,but thats why we pay wheel aligners!,but can be set to maximise handling,tyre wear etc or to correct suspension geometry due to lowering and can have different settings required from vehicle to vehicle ,no they are very different,camber is the lean in or our of the tyre on a vertical axis and caster is where in the wheel arch,front or back the tyre is located,these are putting them very simply,look them up fdor a tech rundown if you like

Steve

To be honest you should really get camber kits if you lower a magna, that being said im 45mm lowered and havent got camber kits yet. Tyres have done 30,000k's and still in good nick. As for castor whiteline and superpro make an adjuster kit for that, you shouldnt need one unless the car pulls to either side badly.

Any decent wheel alignment place should be able to hook you up.

All a wheel alignment can do is to work on the front and rear toe-in and get a measure what the front to rear alignment is.
A good 4 wheel alignment can make sure that the thrust centre lines of the front and rear suspension are aligned to each other.

That is of course if the mechanic can be bothered to adjust the rear toe on a Magna as most of them seem to be incapable of finding and actually adjusting the rear suspension!!

If you lower a car the suspension geometry is changed.
With the Magna, as the normal version has very upright front wheels, a suspension drop helps to improve the geometry.
At the rear the drop can easily increase the negative camber too much.

As standard the camber and caster of the front suspension and the rear suspension camber are fixed.


There are kits, becoming increasingly rare BTW, to adjust the above.

Whiteline appear to have stopped doing a lot of stuff for our cars.

However, in turn:-

Front camber.
Adjusted with camber bolts.
These replace the upper bolt assembly between the shock absorber and the wheel spindle. They employ eccentric cams and are used to change the relative angle between the shock absorber and the spindle.
Cheap and very easy to fit. Dead easy to adjust.

Front Caster
Adjusted with an eccentric bush that fits on the pin at the rear of the lower track control arm of the front suspension.
This is a push out - push on job.
Needs a set of pushers and spacers to be made as well as access to a workshop press and the use of a bottom ball joint removal tool.
I used a pair of Whiteline bushes made with the yellow Nolathane insulator material.
In my opinion this is a fantastic mod. Car feels so much more stable, steering is now very nicely weighted.
If you have a FWD model then there used to be a combined caster increase with increased anti-lift bush and bracket set.
Here the rear of the track control arm is dropped slightly to increase the anti-lift characteristics of the front suspension. Helps improve mechanical grip under power, however means that the suspension will dive slightly more under brakes.

There is another way to adjust both of these together. This is with an adjustable top mount. Do a search in the forums for details.
Would be much quicker and cheaper overall to fit. However some of the adjustable plates that I have seen are more suited to track use as they delete the top rubber mount from the suspension.


Rear Camber
As the car is lowered the rear suspension geometry means that there is a significant change in the rear suspension camber to negative.
Too much negative at the rear accelerates rear tyre wear and makes the rear suspension twitchy.
On a Magna the fix is to move the top rear inner pivot point outwards.
It appears that Whiteline no longer do the rear adjust kit.
All that is required to do this is a set of longer high tensile bolts and a set of hardened steel washers.
I really ought to measure the rear suspension and work out what is required to change the rear camber by 1°. Then it is simple math to work out what thickness of washer is required to adjust the rear suspension.

Hope that this helps.
Otherwise have a look at the technical articles on the Whiteline site to get an idea of what the effect of camber and caster is.

So agree with Spud100 - especially re finding a good mecho who actually firstly understands and then bothers to adjust the rear toe.
They rarely do that, cos it's extra time spent on the same fee, and they just assume most car owners have no idea about these things. I stopped going to such "professionals" and manufactured simple but working measuring system using cuppla lasers etc to do our own (5 cars) with my bro.
After lowering (with Pedders) I was "advised" that this is as low as I can go without camber issues. Yeah, cuppla years later wondering about odd tyre wear and multiple visits to Pedders (it's all sweet Mate BS) did our own measures and rear camber was 4-5 deg neg. Good one!
Finally got camber bolts to front, spacers for the back and fortunatley the original toe adjustment at rear was just sufficient to correct the angles. Now it's much better. I keep the camber around 1.5 neg - lets not get too picky here, one never drives in absolutely flat surface not turning at all, hence making statements of any more accurate degrees is quite theoretical, if u see what I mean.
Toe I keep close to 0 both B and F.
I don't drive the Magna that much any more, so tyre wear issue will be discovered later. :cool:

my car is custom lowered and i would advise on getting a camber kit in the rear. I got on in front only so i could lower it to the point i did but i definately neeeded one in the rear due to tyre wear. A good tyre specialist or suspension place would be able to tell you if they are needed. Just ring them and ask.

All a wheel alignment can do is to work on the front and rear toe-in and get a measure what the front to rear alignment is.
A good 4 wheel alignment can make sure that the thrust centre lines of the front and rear suspension are aligned to each other.

That is of course if the mechanic can be bothered to adjust the rear toe on a Magna as most of them seem to be incapable of finding and actually adjusting the rear suspension!!

If you lower a car the suspension geometry is changed.
With the Magna, as the normal version has very upright front wheels, a suspension drop helps to improve the geometry.
At the rear the drop can easily increase the negative camber too much.

As standard the camber and caster of the front suspension and the rear suspension camber are fixed.


There are kits, becoming increasingly rare BTW, to adjust the above.

Whiteline appear to have stopped doing a lot of stuff for our cars.

However, in turn:-

Front camber.
Adjusted with camber bolts.
These replace the upper bolt assembly between the shock absorber and the wheel spindle. They employ eccentric cams and are used to change the relative angle between the shock absorber and the spindle.
Cheap and very easy to fit. Dead easy to adjust.

Front Caster
Adjusted with an eccentric bush that fits on the pin at the rear of the lower track control arm of the front suspension.
This is a push out - push on job.
Needs a set of pushers and spacers to be made as well as access to a workshop press and the use of a bottom ball joint removal tool.
I used a pair of Whiteline bushes made with the yellow Nolathane insulator material.
In my opinion this is a fantastic mod. Car feels so much more stable, steering is now very nicely weighted.
If you have a FWD model then there used to be a combined caster increase with increased anti-lift bush and bracket set.
Here the rear of the track control arm is dropped slightly to increase the anti-lift characteristics of the front suspension. Helps improve mechanical grip under power, however means that the suspension will dive slightly more under brakes.

There is another way to adjust both of these together. This is with an adjustable top mount. Do a search in the forums for details.
Would be much quicker and cheaper overall to fit. However some of the adjustable plates that I have seen are more suited to track use as they delete the top rubber mount from the suspension.


Rear Camber
As the car is lowered the rear suspension geometry means that there is a significant change in the rear suspension camber to negative.
Too much negative at the rear accelerates rear tyre wear and makes the rear suspension twitchy.
On a Magna the fix is to move the top rear inner pivot point outwards.
It appears that Whiteline no longer do the rear adjust kit.
All that is required to do this is a set of longer high tensile bolts and a set of hardened steel washers.
I really ought to measure the rear suspension and work out what is required to change the rear camber by 1°. Then it is simple math to work out what thickness of washer is required to adjust the rear suspension.

Hope that this helps.
Otherwise have a look at the technical articles on the Whiteline site to get an idea of what the effect of camber and caster is.

Good write up, with the antilift kits/caster Whiteline no longer make them and they are fresh out of the KCA 372's but still have a handful of KCA 358's

Good write up, with the antilift kits/caster Whiteline no longer make them and they are fresh out of the KCA 372's but still have a handful of KCA 358's

also, don't forget the Noltec adjustable strut mounts which give on-car adjustable camber and caster. available for TE-TW (and I assume Veradas too). part number N44082.

cheers,
.wook