glad I'm not the only one who has never seen this done. what issue can this cause if any? what about suspension travel with the OEM having more travel and softer does this mean you will bottom out easier?

Please post were you got them from and any more info anyone can add on this. This could be a good solution for me when my wife takes over the car to have it "look" good but offer a softer ride as OEM would.

 

Essentially what it's doing is changing the height of where the steering knuckle sits. If your car is on the lift and you installed these RCAs, you'll see that the wheel will be sitting higher than it was before. Put your car onto the ground and the raised knuckle will translate into a lower ride height.

Camber will most definitely not stay the same because you're changing the total length between the lower control arm and the upper control arm. If you're on springs, the shock travel will be the same.


That's the original intent of these adapters. You're suppose to adjust your coils to the original height so that these RCAs can correct your roll center. You'll end up gaining back some shock travel if you have coils that do not have dual height adjustment. Over time, the Lexus crowd have adopted these as a mean of lowering the car for cosmetic reasons.

As for being a substitute for a camber kit, it really depends. I haven't seen too many before and after alignments for guys who use RCAs for their original purposes. Most 2GS guys use these to get their cars closer to being slammed so their camber is ridiculously negative anyways.

One thing I do know is that when adding the RCA to a spring setup, you'll most likely gain negative camber.

 

You mean, bringing it closer to stock?

After thinking of the dynamics of this part, it makes sense to use these to correct the camber AND increase(or keep, depends if you are lowered or not) the shock's travel. I understand how the front works, but have yet to figure out the rear, probably due to the lack of pictures.

I'm still curious what effect this will have for the AWD cars and the wobble issue. It seems like it will help lift the axle position back by the respective amount.

 

No. Further away from stock. You'll be more negative if you've already started out with negative camber. Due to the arc motion that the upper control arm swings, it's most likely going to add negative camber.

I dont know what the rear suspension of the 3GS looks like, but if it's anything like the 2GS, then the RCA does essentially the same thing. It raises the knuckle. Except some rear RCA have camber correction inserts (rectangular shape that the top bolt goes through) so you can change camber angles:

 

GSteg has explained these pretty well and tons better than I could. As far as camber is concerned it's hard for me to tell if it was affected. I thought these RCAs were a good alternative since there are no moving parts to this it is a metal block. The block size I have on is 25mm. The stock springs aren't compressed so the distance they travel up and down are not affected.

 

Pics added... car's dirty but this shows the drop pretty well, my rear is at stock height.

 

Front is perfect IMO. Rear could use 5 ~ 10 mm to make it dead on even. Lexus lets push the new model out like this

 

is it me or is it just for the fronts you would still need lowering springs for the back....or am i missing something

 

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I should receive my sage RCA next week so I'll see how it goes.

 

is this similar to the you zealand (sp?) thingy that was posted about a year or two ago?

 

anyone know where i can contact the maker... i have some question....????

 

I'm curious too about how this works (and what the tradeoffs are)...

 

Yeah..this is similar to what youzealand makes. they have developed blocks for the rears.. As RCAs only have fronts.

Trade offs would maybe be minor camber but that's it. It is a solid aluminum block that will not break. I really can't tell the difference between riding on the blocks or with out them. They're not adjustbale of course like coils. You'd need to be sure on the drop you want.

 

how is the height from side to side? I know that Lexus has a tendency to lean or sit lower on one side. does one side sit slightly lower then the other on the fronts?

 

You mean if if you're looking at the car head on, you'd expect to see a slight tilt favoring the left or right side?