Sorry about the double post - something's amiss here!

I've heard both good and bad about camber kits. I'm aware that if you lower the car you'll probably need to adjust for negative camber. Are there any camber kits worth buying?

Once you put on a kit like the "Wicked" ones on eBay, do you lose any clearance in the wheel well? I'm lowered and on 17's so I can't afford to lose any more space.

 

How low are you?

My experience is that 1.5" or more you need a camber kit for the front. Ingalls makes a camber kit for your car, adjustable ball joints will work fine. The rear will be fine because camber is not an issue on IRS setups.

Not too pricey either. And I've never heard anything negative.

 

I'm about 1.5" low. With my setup, the back actually looks worse than the front. The rears are noticeably tipped in at the tops. I'm changing from cheapo adjustable coilovers to Tein S-Tech lowering springs but the drop should be about the same as what I'm measuring right now.

 

on the4g cars yoou have to watch the outer edge of the UCA. it tends to find the inner fender, and the upper frame rail easily. the problem is the size of the upper ball joint. if honda had used a smaller joint, they could have slid it out further, or given you room to install a ingalls type pivot kit.

personally, I hate the ingalls kits. they are poorly designed, and poorly constructed. thier adjustment is very coarse, and difficult to maintain. hard driving can and will make the adjusters slip, and this leads to camber AND caster issues, making the car very unstable.

the adjustable ball joints might be cool, but since they are so tall, they will bind up in the inner fender before you really get low enough to need them.

one company makes a $500 set of uppers with a sliding ball joint (looks like a toyota pickup upper bj), but in the pics it doesn't look like they come any futher out really than the stock ball joint sits. and, since there is still a clearance issue at the rail, i'm not sure these will adaquately clear a stock car.

this summer I should have some adjustable uppers available for the 4g cars, I'll let everyone know as soon as testing is complete.

 

The front of the car is indeed where a Camber kit is going to be needed for a street setup. How much you lower the car determines (in part) which kits are called for. We use the SPC UCA kits rather than the balljoints. In either case be prepared to resolve the contact of the outer edge of the UCA and inner fender liner. This problem is easily solved by flattening the contact point. If you use the ball joint kits there is a possibility that you will have the stud hitting the tower-there is no known real cure for this except to let the dimple be there and TIG it in place-that will provide some additional clearance. The rear is a simple matter. For your drop it is most unlikely that you will need more than a simple shim/washer to correct it if at all. There are fancier ways-but this is one that works for almost free.
What brand of parts you get is up to you. The Ingalls front inner kit slides while the SPC uses an offset bushing (required for SCCA ITA).
Good luck

 

Is this the place in the rear to add washers for correcting camber? Is there an easy way to measure camber - maybe a level off the rotor or something or should I just take it in and have the pros do it?

 

I have the SPC adjustable ball joints on my car, and I'm happy with them. They made it real easy for my alignment guy to work on my car. I would recommend them.

Word of caution:
The only problem I had was replacing the ball joints themselves. On the '88 & '89 CRX's the ball joint is welded into the upper control arm. My CRX is an '89, so what I had to do was find '90 & up Civic/CRX upper control arms. The ball joints on the '90+ EF chassis Civics can be removed from the upper control arms. I think the '90-'93 Integra UCA's are the same part as the Civics; don't quote me on that though.

To remove the ball joint, take the boot off and remove the ring clip that keeps the ball joint in place. Then use some kind of hydrolic press to push the ball joint out the top of the upper control arm. Use a press, or clamps, to get the new ball joint peices in. Don't pound them in with a hammer or something stupid like that.

If you buy it, the SPC kit comes with instructions so read them...don't just look at the pictures

Oh, and for the rear I just added washers. Although when I replace all the bushings in my car I'm going to get the adjustable camber kit for the rear. It would be a smarter investment than relying on washers h: