Whiteline KTA124 Adjustable Camber/Toe Link Install

Today we will be going over the installation of the Whiteline KTA124 Rear Camber and Toe Links. In the interest of keeping this concise we will leave the discussion of the merits of this kit to later posts and just document the walkthrough here.

 

Tools Required:

 

 

• Floor Jack
  
• Jack Stands (2x or 4x)
  
• 3/8" Drive Ratchet and Metric Socket Set (14-22mm at a minimum)
  
• Breaker Bar and/or Cheater Pipe
  
• 1/2" Drive Tools and Impact Wrench STRONGLY RECOMMENDED
  
• Metric Wrenches (Box or Open End, 14-19mm minimum)
  
• Adjustable Wrench (8")
  
• P'Blaster or Liquid Wrench
  
• Anti-Seize
  
• White Paint Marker/White-out/Scribe Pen
  

 

1. Park the car on a level surface. The car should be put in park if it is an automatic, or left in gear with the parking brake engaged if it is manual. Crack the rear lugnuts loose with the car on the ground, but don't remove them yet.

 

2. Jack up the rear of the car (or the whole car if you prefer) until the wheels are off the ground. Set the car on jack stands and ensure the vehicle is stable.

 

3. Remove the rear wheels. I like to put mine under the side sills of the car as extra protection. You can never be too safe with a 3,500lb car over your head.

 

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7151/img8164s.jpg

 

4. At this point I would definitely recommend soaking the relevant bolts with the P'Blaster or Liquid Wrench. Some of my bolts were VERY frozen and I have worked on those connections within the last year or two. Here are the bolts you want to hit, circled in red. Make sure you hit both sides of each connection and on both sides of the car.

 

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9628/img8173s.jpg

 

5. While you’re under the car take a look at your exhaust. I happen to have an SPT catback which is really easy to remove. Two bolts and a couple exhaust hangers and it's out of the way. As such, I did the rest of my walkthrough with it off the car. If you feel like you can work around the exhaust, great, otherwise consider removing it. For me the time and convenience gained with it off made up for the extra effort.

 

6. Now that your bolts have had some time to soak, you will want to mark the rear toe adjusting bolts to the sub-frame. This will allow you to put the car back together with the closest possible toe angle so you can drive to get your alignment. You will need to wipe clean the head of the eccentric bolt and scribe or draw a line so you can line everything up when you're done. See below. I prefer to use a white paint marker so I can clean the line off later.

 

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/1184/img8173s2.jpg

 

7. Removing the Toe Link: Using a ratchet and wrench combo, remove the rear toe bolt, washer and nut. Then remove the bolt at the other end of the link that attaches it to the control arm.

 

8. Setting up Whiteline Toe Link: Take your Whiteline Toe Link and loosen the two lock nuts on the turn-buckle. If you are obsessive like me you will thread the nuts all the way in towards the center and thread the rod ends on until they are even side-to-side, giving everything a coat of anti-seize is a good idea too. When that is done you will want to set the length of the link to match the link you removed. I place the original bolts in the OEM link and adjust until the Whiteline link fits easily over the bolts. Simple! At this point you will want to tighten the lock nuts on the link, but only just enough so that you don't lose your adjustment. The final tightening doesn't happen until the link is installed and the weight of the car is on the tires.

 

Comparison of WL and OEM link:

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1355/img8200s.jpg

 

9. Installing the Whiteline Toe Link: With your WL Toe Link properly adjusted, install the link in the opposite process of removal. Make sure your eccentric bolt is lined up with the mark you made earlier. At this point you will want to put a healthy dose of chassis grease on the bolts so they pivot freely for a long time. My personal preference is Mobil1 chassis grease, available at most autopart stores in cartridge form. For final tightening see the torque specs in the attached diagram.

 

10. Removing the “Lower” Lateral Link. Using a ratchet and wrench combo, remove the bolts that secure the lateral link to the sub-frame and control arm.

 

11. Setting up the Whiteline Camber Link: Repeat step 8 to adjust the Whiteline Camber Link to the proper length. Don’t forget to anti-seize everything!

 

Comparison of OEM, 4BoxParts and Whiteline Camber Links:

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/8648/img8195s.jpg

 

12. Installing the Whiteline Camber Link: Install the camber link to the control arm. Whiteline includes washers that will need to be placed on either side of the bushing at the control arm side. They also recommend you coat the washers with the included grease to eliminate any squeaking from polyurethane/metal contact.

 

Hint: Two of my washers had just slightly too small an inside diameter and needed to be drilled out with a ½” drill. Also, you may have to gently pry on the control arm bracket to fit the link and two washers in. I installed one washer and the link, holding them with the bolt, and then gently pried with a flat-head screwdriver while pushing the final washer into place. A few light taps with a small hammer and everything lined up perfectly. Finally, I was not able to torque this bolt to the spec in the diagram. I stripped the threads off of two brand new bolts in the torquing process. For the third bolt I simply torqued it as much as possible with a standard 3/8” ratchet. I have checked it twice in the 3,000 miles since the install and all is well.

With the control arm side installed, you may now install the sub-frame side. Don’t forget the chassis grease and to anti-seize those threads!

 

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/329/img8197se.jpg

 

13. I did one side of the car at a time, so at this point I repeated steps 6-12 for the passenger side. If you did both sides at the same time you are ready to move on.

 

14. With the arms installed and all the bolts torqued (but not the turn-buckles) you can now reinstall the wheels and tighten the lugs down by hand. If you removed your cat-back exhaust, don’t forget to reinstall it at this point!

 

Here's what my suspension looks like (w/o SPT CBE):

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/673/img8207s.jpg

 

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/2976/img8202s.jpg

 

15. To torque the lock nuts on the turn-buckle, the suspension needs to be loaded. If this is not done then you may force the metal sleeve bushings off-axis on their bolts which will cause them to wear excessively and fail prematurely. I lowered the car onto two wheel dollies so that I still had enough room to get underneath with my adjustable wrench. Using the adjustable wrench I simply tightened the lock nuts against the rod-ends as tight as possible, for all four links (8 nuts total).

 

16. Return the car to the ground and torque the lug nuts fully. At this point you will want to take the car for a short test drive at low speeds to make sure everything is installed correctly.

 

17. Alignment! I cannot recommend strongly enough how important it is to get an alignment very soon after this install. Not only can you chew up your tires if your toe is significantly off, the handling of the car may be drastically different from what you are used to. Unless you know specifically what specs you want to run, I recommend having the alignment set to 0 degrees of toe at all four wheels, as much negative camber as you can get from the front (I was able to get -1.4 degrees using the stock adjusting bolt) and -1 degree camber from the rear. This will give you a good place to start from for experimenting with the effects of alignment tuning.

 

The Whiteline KTA124 provides a very wide range of adjustment for both camber and toe. Working with my alignment technician, we found that roughly 1-turn of the turn-buckle gave a .25 degree change in camber and there were easily 5 degrees worth of usable rotations (as you will find out when you fully unthread and rethread each one to anti-seize it!). We estimated that the same was true for the toe adjustment, and that you could go well beyond any reasonable range of adjustment without exceeding the 20mm minimum thread engagement that Whiteline recommends for the turn-buckle into the rod ends.

 

18. Finally, you should check the torque on all the relevant connections within 100 miles to make sure nothing has loosened up.

 

Congratulations, you now have installed the Whiteline KTA124 Adjustable Camber and Toe Links! Enjoy!

Nice write-up.

 

I should go and re-grease all of my bolts,and re-anti-seize the threads!

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/673/img8207s.jpg

 

THAT looks like a cluster f$k.

 

THAT looks like a cluster f$k.

 

In a good way I hope?

 

I also want to add that the toe link actually provided better fitment with my aftermarket parts than the OEM. On the control arm side of the link, the OEM link is "boxed" construction, which can be seen in the following pic. As the suspension compressed the edge of the top face of the link would contact my RSB and had worn a clean groove through the paint which caused the rust spot you see. With the new link there is no contact.

 

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3041/img81733.jpg

 

 

Also, I have found the Whiteline links to be stiffer than the 4BoxParts links. On the 4BoxParts link the potting material in the rod end only secures ~60% of the length of the bushing, versus the Whiteline which completely captures the bushing with their poly inserts. Also the durometer of the two materials seems to be stiffer on the Whiteline parts, which adds to the benefit. There has been no increase in NVH though.

Question; What does this do to unsprung weight in the suspension?

 

My car ( or me ) is very sensitive to any unsprung weight. This is why I have not bought any wheels, I want feather light wheels and tires and they are pricy.

I didn't put them on a scale, because having compared all the other GT (steel) and Spec.B links (aluminum) I knew that the difference was less than a pound for these lateral links. Even the upper link which is substantially larger than the two in this kit was a small difference in weight. In fact, the adjustable links are likely heavier than the non-adjustable versions. However, with suspension links the weight isn't entirely sprung or unsprung and depending on the geometry it could be anywhere in between 1-99% unsprung. Let's say 50/50 for argument sake so you're talking about maybe 1/2 pound per link of unsprung weight. Going to Spec.B trailing arms saved me 7lbs, or ~3.5lbs unsprung, at each rear corner and my wheel/tire combo is about 5lbs lighter than stock, so I still come out ahead and I can control my alignment very precisely.

 

We do have the spec.b links on the site with the weight differences:

Upper Links: http://www.fredbeansparts.com/index.php/subaru-legacy-spec-b-lateral-link-set.html

Trailing Arms: http://www.fredbeansparts.com/index.php/subaru-legacy-spec-b-aluminum-trailing-arm-set.html

Sponsor me a set, lol.

Group buy?

Group buy?

 

I ordered these thru Fredbeans when they were having Whiteline sales, I think in May. I haven't received them yet. When's the ETA for the parts?

 

-Sam

I'm sorry for the delay sir. I know we sold out relatively quickly and depleted the North American distributors supply. I believe they were having several sets produced and shipped from Australia, but I will get an ETA for you from Jeremy in the morning.

 

-Rick

Let us know when they're in

Got my Whiteline camber arms in yesterday. Ordered them from Fred Beans of course. The install went well until I realized someone had jacked half the washers from the set I bought. :-(

 

So the fabricating had to begin @ 1am ... just my luck.

 

The washers are VERY important as without them there is WAYYY too much slack.

Can anyone confirm that the part listed as number 6 with the description "link rod" in the diagram below is the OEM camber bar link?

 

http://www.trademotion.com/parts/2006/SUBARU/LEGACY/GT/?siteid=216335&vehicleid=1432596&diagram=7523715

 

I've had the 4BoxParts and Whiteline camber arms both fail on me (worn out bushings) and I want to go back to stock.

Yes, #6 is the camber links. FWIW, I don't think my car has any of the problems mentioned in the other thread you just posted in...

Yeah, I don't know why I'm having this issue while nobody else is.

Can we update photos? Sorry for the dead bump, not sorry.

fred beans killed off their internet dept.

I may still have the orginals somewhere.

Rough estimate on how long it should take to complete the install? Thanks!

^assuming your rear toe adjust bolts are not fused, about 2-3hrs for a slowpoke. if they are fused, then it will take as long as the shipping is for new bolts.

Just ordered these! Cant wait to install them! Rear Drivers side has been stuck for the toe adjustment. Hopefully ill be straight after this!

this kit is all well and good, but why don't they just include w63394 bushing, everywhere i looked it doesn't seem to include it.

 

am i wrong this kit is missing a crucial bit to it, from a symmetrical stance(poly everything).

 

btw that is the bushing that connects the longest arm at the spindle.

They don't package it together because it is optional. There need not be symmetry of bushing deflection at both ends of the link.

does this kit fix camber more than KCA399 or will that be a nice addition to this kit as well?

 

also why is KCA399 less than the non adjustable W63397 not that i'm complaining, i'm just saying, I don't understand you whiteline:confused: but i love you anyway.

Yes this kit fixes camber significantly more. I think with this you can get as much or as little camber as you could reasonably want.

 

I have the KCA399 and rear camber was - 2, installed the kit and rear was - 3.5 Got an alignment and am at - 1.2 now.

 

Installing it sucked though. One of my rear bolts was frozen inside the old bushings and I was only able to remove it with Underdogs advice and 4 drill bits.