Alignment issue

[R33-East]

Over the winter I installed HKS Hipermax 3 coilovers on my R33 GTR and lowered it to 355mm(measured from wheel center to fender) and also installed whiteline adjustable control arms on the rear and camber kit on the front. Today I took the car to the shop for an alignment, they didn't have the specs for it so I did a quick search and found what the standard settings should be. After the alignment the car is pulling to the right so I did some more searching and found this http://www.risingsunperformance.co.u.../BCNR33GTR.pdf

All the adjustments are within the min and max specs however I did not have the caster side-side adjustment spec when the alignment was done. So the difference in caster from side to side may be greater than the recommended spec and causing the pull to the right? I also wondered if the standard alignment settings should be used for a lowered car or should the settings be altered?

Any help on this would be appreciated.

[BrianV8]

Specs look fine. If its pulling imo they screwed something up. Only other thing i could possibly think of and its a long shot. You have one front caliper locked up and that could maybe cause a pull.

[bignate]

If the car wasn't pulling before and is after the alignment then they must have made an error aligning it (and/or did not road test it after). Can you post the printout with the specs they aligned your car to?

[BrianV8]

I'd have to do some looking my car was setup to custom specs.

If i can remember off the top of my head these where the final results

Front caster +5.5 degrees
rear caster: don't remember
front camber -2.2 degrees
rear camber -2.2 degrees (going to change to a smaller tire and get closer to 1-1.5 degrees for better tire wear)
Front toe 0 degrees
Rear toe 0 degrees.

love this setup

End of the day if the numbers or equal side to side or close to it you should never have a problem with the car pulling

[bignate]

what specs you have the car aligned to have a lot to do with its use. If its a race car you want lots of positive caster, quite a lot of negative camber and the toe more or less straight (possibly a little toe out on the front for better turn in and a little toe in in the rear for high speed stability). For a street car you will want about a half a degree lead to the left in order to compensate for road crown and have the car track straight.

[BrianV8]

I drive my car on the street regularly. Works well on the street and performs awesome on autocross days

[MarusGTR]

If you want to do it again, get it done at nissan, they have skylines in the system and their interface is pretty idiot proof. I was actually calling out the readings while the tech was turning the camber arms, telling him how much to turn them.

Only gripe: the tech didn't make sure the wheels were absolutely straight so my steering wheel is a bit off at the neutral point.

[R33-East]

Thanks guys, I didn't get the printout as I was in a hurry to get somewhere else. The guy who did it was a friend and did the best he could with what he had, even called nissan but they said it wasn't in their system??

I am going to ask some of the guys at the local tuner club about a good place to get an alignment. I still suspect the side to side caster is the problem. Also going to check my calipers they were rebuilt and have new pads so that may be the issue to.

Ill post an update once I get things checked out.

[MarusGTR]

Maybe if you tell them to look under the chassis variations, they had BNR32 from vanilla to VspecII and GTRs from 89 to 02.

[caliber676]

Well if your caster is not adjusted properly it will pull to the side with the most negative caster. This isnt an angle you want to skip over. The other thing to keep in mind is the road crown where you drive. For drainage, roads are actually curve shaped, with the highest point in the centerline and lowest at side. In some vehicles and if the road crown is pronounced enough you will actually have to adjust your alignment to compensate for this.

[burton160]

i work at Mercedes Benz and our alignment mechine has skylines in th system. Definitely try taking it to a dealer. Or a front end specialist.

[BrianV8]

I never had my camber adjusted for road crown and i found no difference before and after.