99 Stagea wheel alignment

[Chevzuki]

So when I bought this car a year ago, and drove it back home 3000km the rear tires didn't exist when I got back, the back of the car was covered in rubber dust.  Anyways, the dealer went good and paid for the alignment and new rear tires.  A year later and and I'm still getting abnormal tire wear.  If you look at my alignment paper work you can see it's mostly camber issues.  What do you guys suggest to do to fix it, he told me he adjusted everything as much as possible and suggested to either replace all the bushing but said that with these suspension setups there's so many bushings that in a a couple years it would do it again.  Option two which he recommended was to make or buy adjustable parts.  What parts would I need and is any of the stuff on eBay any good.

[Duncan]

Where on earth are you that they track toe in fractions of an inch! Adding location in your profile would help.

Anyway, the camber front and rear is fine. Yes it could be a little less on the rear with adjustable bushes in the upper control arm, maybe -0.5 as a target, but it is not crazy. Adjustable bushes in the upper control arm are reasonably cheap to have done.

However, I assume the issue you saw with "abnormal wear" was at the rear, with the "before" values above. If so it is the left rear toe that was the issue, it was miles out (kilometers out in most of the world) which means the tyre was not running straight on the road.

[Chevzuki]

I'm in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  I'm still getting wear even after the alignment.  And yes mostly on the rear.  Is there any info out there on making my current linkages adjustable? I'm sure I'd figure it out on my own but it's my daily driver and would need to be able to do it in day or two. I do do a lot of fabricating work, I used to work in a shop customizing commercial trucks, lengthening and shortening frames and drivelines.

[GTSBoy]

Don't even consider trying to modify the existing arms to make them adjustable. There are adjustable urethane bushes you can put in, but they only offer a tiny adjustment. There are heaps of really good adjustable arms available. And some shitty ones. Many of the ones you see on eBay are fairly shitty. One brand worth looking at is Hardrace. You can get them with spherical joints or with hardened rubber bushes. For a streeter, especially a wagon, especially in the frozen ice-hole of Hoth (Canada) I'd not recommend sphericals.

You will need to buy both the camber arms and the traction rods (adjustable) and whatever % change you make on the camber arms (from the stock length) you should make on the traction arms also. This is the best way to keep the bumpsteer response under control if you're not going to go to the effort of actually measuring the bumpsteer and correcting it in detail. And trust me. If your wheel aligner is using DR30 Skyline specs for aligning your Stagea, they are not qualified to be trying to measure bump steer!

You should look to the equivalent era Skyline for guidance on wheel alignment. But more realistically, there would have to be plenty of people discussing the ideal settings for all the Stageas in their various wagon dungeons.

For serious, my recommendation for the rear is -0.75° camber and 0.5 - 1.0 mm toe in each side.

Make sure that your aligner does a thrust line alignment to make sure that the car isn't bent. If the front is driving one way, and the rear is driving another, you can't really win, then you have to start biasing the alignment front and rear to compensate, and there is no way anyone can advise yo what to do about that over the internet.

[KiwiRS4T]

I have attached the wheel alignment specs that I have used...but yours now should be ok.  You can buy adjustable camber and castor arms (and it is not where you buy them but the brand that matters - and no, you don't want rubbish that will break) but I don't think that is what you need. What are your rear shocks like? If they are worn out that could be giving you problems. If you can jack up the rear of the car to take the weight off the wheels then maybe you can use a bar or something to see where there is excessive play. A set of bushes should last longer than a few years.

Wheel alignment specs.ods

[Chevzuki]

Thank you guys for the quick responses.  I'll see about jacking it up tomorrow and checking for play.  The rear does sit a bit low, especially if I put anything in the back.