This is why having an alignment done after lowering is unnecessary. A lot of guys pay just so they can say they got an alignment done They can bring the toe in to specs but its very minimal, toe does not change when you lower your car only the camber, unless you hit a pothole or something.

 

I've never aligned any of my lowered cars.....can't make it up a rack cause too SLAMMED!! Screw it!!! New tirees!!

 

Tire feathering, thanks for this thread bro, this good to know. I recently bought my car and was thinking about lowering it, now I have to think about LMAO but at least you got your tires up to 15K

 

lol what?? You can't have camber change without toe changing at the same time. They (balljoint, control arm, tie rod) are all linked together physically. An alignment is a MUST, unless you want to wear our your tires even faster. If the tires wear out in 10k miles with an alignment, then it's going to well out even earlier if you don't get your toe fixed.

Toe wear is essentially tire scrubbing against the road. Camber is just rolling wear. Excessive camber AND toe is the deadly combination. No alignment after changing car's height =

 

Something else to think about before lowering, get your fenders rolled/shaved beforehand!



https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...-on-coils.html

 

^Ouch

Yes toe will wear your tires out and camber will wear the inside of your tires. The op had negative camber after he lowered which is why the inside of his tires were worn. The general rule is a degree for every inch lowered. My point was if its a minimal drop like in this case, alignment isn't really necessary look at the op's spec sheet after he lowered it, he's still good on the toe and camber is slightly out but they can't fixed camber anyway at least not on the IS. Now if you are slammed I say get an alignment to correct the toe. You gotta pay to play lowering does make this car look 10 times better.

 

Always get your car aligned after a suspension change.

 

To clarify, I had it lowered 18 months + ago. I had an alignment done then. Recently found the inside wear issue, got new tires, had the alignment checked. Its OK except for camber. I don't know what it was like when at the 'before' point after the lowering...I think they did fix the toe at that time though.

This time the tech at Les Schwab is really a good guy. Put it on the machine, found nothing he could do...no charge..Lots of places would still charge you full fare $80 in this case for doing nothing more than setting the machine up.

 

Even if you lower half an inch, an alignment is still needed. His alignment was done 18 months after he was lowered so the 'before' numbers you see is most likely from the previous alignment. It just happened that the car retained the same parameters for 18 months. There is no rule of thumb for dropping an alignment. Actually the only rule is to get damn good alignment every time you modify something in your suspension whether it be for 1/2" or 2". 1 degree of negative camber is forgiveable (many stock cars exceed this). 1 degree of total toe in or out will chew through your tire like you've never seen before. I've been down the same path with my car before. Lowered 1" all around, with about -1.2 degrees of camber up front, but the toe was not adjusted properly by the monkey mechanic, so my tires were killed in less than 1000 miles. Got a new set of tires, had the toe adjusted to my own spec, and went on for another 20k before needing a new set of tires.

 

get a rear camber kit (megan or cusco), get the front camber ball joints for is300 if the front wear really bothers you that much. get an alignment. done.

yes i agree that our cars suck when it comes to alignment, but get your toe in spec and you'll be good. either way camber is gonna get at your tires, but toe in spec will at least prolong the inevitable.

and sffd103, look into getting an alignment done at tire outlet in san jose.