Excessive rear camber & toe-in. Options?

'05 Legacy Wagon 2.5i. Bone stock. I just tried to have my Legacy aligned after rebuilding the rear suspension and it's pretty out of wack.

 

 

This was the best he could do. Forward & Rear lateral links are new. Upper lateral links have new inner Whiteline bushings. The outers are fine. Also new whiteline trailing arm bushings. New toe adjustment bolts.

 

Ride height, measured to the ground to the fender lip is:

 

LF 25 3/8"

RF 26 3/4"

LR 25 3/4"

RR 25 1/4"

 

This was measured in my garage which I believe to be level.

 

What should I do? I know Whiteline makes a rear camber bolt for the upper lateral outer bushing but is that enough to correct 3 degrees? That also is unlikely to help rear toe much. How much effect does camber have on toe anyway?

 

Also the R/F camber. That was the best he could get it. The struts appear to be originals. Is there a camber bolt that gives a little more adjustment?

What exactly did you do to rear suspension

Some backstory:

 

Bought car about 2 months ago. Noticed rear end wiggled everywhere on bumps, creaking noises, saggy butt, the works. Found trailing arm bushings torn, upper inner lateral link bushings completely gone (metal to metal), and the rest of the bushings looked not too far behind. Also car had excessive rear toe-in, and possibly camber too. Also found new rear shock/springs of unknown brand but undoubtedly from eBay.

 

I replaced the trailing arm bushings with whiteline polyurethane, the upper inner lateral link bushings with whiteline, dorman forward lateral links, and some other aftermarket rear lower lateral links, as well as new Moog toe adjustment bolts. The ride height issue seems improved, but the toe (and I guess camber too) issue is the same, now verified by a machine and not just my eyes.

 

I guess the question I should be asking is how much does ride height influence camber and toe? If the car is riding too low by an inch could that be what's throwing everything off?

 

Another possibility. I accidentally installed the rearward lateral links upside down and drove on it a little bit before reinstalling them the right way. The arms might have bent slightly although visually they look fine. I'd be ready to blame them for it if it didn't already have this problem to begin with.

Any traces of a previous accident?

 

 

Are the replacement arms OEM, and verified to be for your model year? Sometimes there are small but significant changes to parts that can lead to problems like this. The upside down mounting might be the cause if the arms took a hit by it.

 

 

Anything is possible.

No evidence of an accident. The lower lateral links are aftermarket but the upper one is my original, just rebushed. Even if the lowers were the cause I’m having trouble understanding how that would effect camber this much. The lowers should only affect toe as far as I can see.

 

I suppose it’s possible that my upper lateral link is bent. I’m going to have to measure them and see.

Camber/toe will obviously change when the car's lower, but when I dropped mine about an inch, I had toe out of spec about .5 deg per side and rear camber was -2 deg but even across both sides. I also had bad bushings at that point. Ended up doing all the bushings and installing adjustable lateral links, so I didn't have to worry about it. Kind of a pricy route if you go with the Whiteline KTA arms, but you'll definitely have whatever adjustment range you need to get it fixed.

 

Otherwise, since you have that big a discrepancy in camber left to right, my first inclination would be to pull off the link that you installed upside down along with its partner on the other side of the car, and see if you can put bolts through both arms simultaneously to check whether the bolt to bolt length is off on one versus the other. That should give you a good indication of whether damage to the arm is responsible for what you're seeing.

Otherwise, since you have that big a discrepancy in camber left to right, my first inclination would be to pull off the link that you installed upside down along with its partner on the other side of the car, and see if you can put bolts through both arms simultaneously to check whether the bolt to bolt length is off on one versus the other. That should give you a good indication of whether damage to the arm is responsible for what you're seeing.

 

That’s a clever idea!! I’m going to give that a try.

Whiteline KTA arms make adjustment leagues easier. If all else fails and the arms need to be replaced to fix your alignment discrepancies, Megan racing sells similar adjustable arms to the whitelines for cheaper, they also have an adjustable upper control arm if yours happen to be bent. if you were to buy just the adjustable upper links then you should be able to correct the camber with just those arms.

I measured the upper lateral links from bolt to bolt on both sides and they measure exactly the same. The rear on this car does sit a little low, which would explain some negative camber and toe-in, but the discrepancy between left and right is what I'm still trying to figure out. If it is as simple as putting on saggy-butt spacers that's exactly what I'll do but I think there's more to it than that.

 

I'm going to try and measure the suspension at full-droop with the rear end off the ground and see if that 3 degrees negative camber is still there.

what about your rear wheel bearings?

It's always good practice to compare parts coming off the car against the ones you're replacing them with. IF it was equal across both sides with the previous parts, then the new parts should be the same, but with no slop in the bushings. I've had parts that were packaged by reputable companies (Moog, Dorman, etc), but were the wrong part on one side. Most recently, this happened with tie rod ends. I wouldn't have noticed the difference in length until I installed them, but comparing them with what came off the car made the difference easy to spot. Considering you have a grab bag of parts being replaced, I would definitely consider that a possibility.

Unfortunately I already discarded the old ones. I measured camber with the rear wheels off the ground and its even on both sides (and visibly positive). So the issue is only when the suspension is loaded. If something was bent, it'd be bent whether the rear is up in the air or not. I feel like I'm going to have to start throwing parts at this thing. Probably starting with the arms that I might have bent. They're only like $20 each. If that doesn't help then I guess I need to address the ride height. Ugh this is annoying.

I know it's pricey, but a set of adjustable lateral links would make this a non-issue. I guess it's a question of how much you like the car and how long you intend to keep it.

 

Try texting/emailing the guys at SubieRecycler.com - they will have parts like that as take-offs from wrecked cars. I've seen them sell KTA-124 arms for less than half of what they cost brand new.

I think I'm going to address the ride height issue first since it needs to be corrected anyway. I'd like to see how much improvement I can get from raising the rear before going crazy with anything else. This is how it currently sits. It's worse with a full tank of fuel.

 

 

Currently it's running some Chinese eBay shock/spring combo in the rear, installed by the previous owner. They actually ride ok. So I'm wondering if I should

 

A: Replace the rear springs only using OEM springs (maybe even LGT wagon rear springs for a little extra stiffness)

 

B: Replace the rear springs only using aftermarket Moog coil springs.

 

C: Coil spring boosters like this: https://www.jegs.com/i/Mr-Gasket/720/1287/10002/-1

 

D: Monroe OESpectrum quick struts.

 

I'm kinda leaning towards C, the cheapest option, just to see what happens.

 

Seemed to work for this guy:

https://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/rear-coil-springs-saggy-butt-fix-208696.html

Have you thought about spending about $60-80 to have a repair shop with a alignment rack check out the car and tell you what they find ?

 

You can ask if they may give you a discount when you replace the parts and have them align the car with the new parts on it.

Already did and they had no clue. They said to bring it back after it's fixed and they'll re-align it no charge. Any other shop I bring it to is going to throw parts at it. I can do that too and not pay for labor.

Wow, I'm sorry to hear you don't have a trusted mechanic.

 

My guy, will inspect the car, tell me whats wrong, ask me how much I want them to do or he'll ask me if there's something I'd like to replace.

 

Just this week, Nov 19th,

"Yesterday, dropped the wagon off at the trusted mechanic. Gave them a note telling them about the intermittent steering wheel shimmy. How I think I can feel the left front axle (aftermarket, w/110,000miles) vibrate sometimes, there is also a clunk in the right front over broken pavement.

 

Also gave them a Timken front hub and a Moog ball joint.

 

Got a call today, axle is bad, left front hub is bad, right ball joint is bad. They will replace a couple bushing in the LCA's too while they are there."

 

I had no idea at the time the hub and ball joint were bad. The wagon has been through so much I had no idea what was really bad. Picked the car up after work yesterday.

It's not even that. I used to turn wrenches for a living, and in fact I was a Subaru master tech (granted that was in 2005 but it's good for something). I don't know what another tech is going to tell me that I don't already know. The problem isn't obvious and if this was a customer's car I'd be at the point of throwing parts at it, which is what I'm doing now. I'm just spitballing out loud at this point and maybe someone else here had the same issue. I've never seen this problem on a customer's car but at the same token they were still relatively new back then.

Heads up on the coil spring spacers - I bouht a set of these:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GFF5CLM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Same principal as what you linked to. They don't really act as a way to lift the car, if you get any height out of them, I expect that height will sag back down pretty quickly as they wear in. I bought them as a supplement to my worn out bump stops on my bilsteins, which are internal, so they can't be replaced very easily. For that purpose, they work great - they limit the upward travel of the wheel. But if I was trying to change the ride height, I would look at spacers on the strut mount (saggy butt spacers) or a longer spring.

 

If you're just curious to see what a little height will do to your alignment, you can put a floor jack under the rear diff, and just give it a couple pumps to raise the rear of the car a inch or so, and then take measurements. It might help to look at how the wheel pivots because the tire will be still be gripping the ground in it's previous position. Or you can roll the rear tires onto a stack of 5-10 plastic grocery bags before you do that. The grocery bags will act as slip plates and allow the rear tires to pivot. I sometimes use the grocery bag trick when I do quick driveway alignments.

Well I installed the spacers and they definitely worked. I gained at least an inch of ride height and the rear actually matches the front now. If anything it's a little higher. The bad news is I'm still toed in and there is still visible negative camber on the right side.

 

Now I'm torn between replacing the lateral links/toe arms again which might not even fix the camber issue or might not fix any issue at all, or just biting the bullet and getting a Whiteline KTA124 kit which will certainly fix the issue but just seems ridiculous. I really don't want to drop another $350 on this beater but it's eating tires so I guess I really don't have much of a choice.

Anyone have the Megan rear camber arms installed? Just got mine on -which was a bear as all the bolts were seized -I have the adjustment the whole way in (negative camber) and there is minimal visible difference. I'm going to level out the car and throw a digital level on it tomorrow (longacre that is made to check camber) -just seems like they did not do much... guess I'm kinda looking for a +/- degrees to expect. The car was in a minor accident years back but no frame damage and aligned just fine to factory specs (I'm an experienced tech). Edited December 14, 2019 by SunburnNYC