Post
by Kamuela » Wed Mar 21, 2018 3:02 am
...and there is something wrong, I think. Look closely at your suspension components, including the strut towers.
When I had mine aligned the first time, the tech could not get the left and right camber even close. Something like -1.9 left, -1.2 right. I replaced the front control arm bushings, both were shot but the right was much more so, to the point where the control are kind of wobbled around. After that, the two were much closer, but we noticed that the right strut tower was slightly mushroomed; that is, deformed upward. Not cracked or torn, just dented a bit. Pouring through the service records, I see that the right front tire was replaced and both right side wheels repaired early on. Astonishingly, it was never re-aligned, but that's another story.
We put a strut tower brace on to reinforce the towers and tie them together (noticeable difference, by the way) and leaned hard on the camber adjustments to get them down to about 0.2 degrees cross camber. The rear was pretty good after adjustment, no parts needed. By the way, the front camber adjustment by moving the top of the struts back and forth is only about 0.2 to 0.3 degrees each way; not a huge amount, so we ended up with the right all the way out and the left all the way in. That and new bushings took care of the problem. Next step might be to install the E46 strut tower reinforcement caps, but I'm not in a rush, it's pretty good now.
You have huge front and rear cross-camber, probably more than can be adjusted out with the normal range of adjustment, so I'm wondering if something's bent, or if the bushings are buggered.
hope you come back with some result