Forewarning to Everyone!, About lowering and rims, please read. Options

[Guest_Jason_*]

Currently i'm riding on Dropzone Coilover's (probably 3-3.5" drop) with 18" rims and 35 series tires.

When you lower your car, your wheels start to lean inwards due to the Camber from lowering your car. Well, after riding on a 3" drop for about 2-3 months now, I thought nothing of my Camber. About 2 days before switching from Lowering Springs to Coilover's, I had all 4 tires on my rims replaced with brand new Nankangs (a decent name brand). Friday night, driving home my back right tire popped, lost its seal with the rim and went completely flat. Consequently, the screwed up Camber caused irregular tire wear on all of my tires (but severly effected the back tires). My tires actually wore inside 4x faster than the outside, causing a very nicely noticeable slant in my tires. Now, these were only 2 month old Tires keep in mind.

After getting my car towed to my uncle's work, NTB wanted to deal with him, so they used my Car as a dummy car to see what kind of work NTB would do. They've been wanting to deal with my Uncle for awhile now, so he put them to the test with my car. Well today all the information cameback. After lowering my car, the negative Camber threw off the alignment very bad, caused irregular tire wear making the tire slant and shrink (weird eh?). Also, the back tire did something inside the fender that needed to be fixed. All and all, for 4 new tires, corrected alignment, mount and balancing and fixed camber, i'm 670$ in the hole... I could have avoided all of this if I would have been smart and did everything from the beginning like I should have.

Now, just a little note to all of you into lowering your car and playing with suspension... don't learn the hardway like I did, take my mistake to your advantage. When lowering your car, get the car taken to a shop immediatly to get your alignment redone and your camber fixed! Spend that 100$ or so (i'm not sure), before your almost 700$ in the hole later.

[Kwanza26]

Well... I'm gonna add a bit...

Negative camber isn't that bad. It's not nearly as bad as you say, or whatever tire shops say. In fact, I prefered very agressive negative camber on my old FC (front and rear)... gripped a lot better in the corners. I drove tires bald with very crappy camber and never experienced any blow-outs that severe, and I promise you, I drove my FC a lot shiittier than anyone could ever drive an FF Celica...

Anyways, my guess is the tires were probably imporperly installed/inflated or something. Maybe a defect of some sort. As far as alignment goes... it's very rare to experience changes in alignment due to lowering a car. I've lowered... I don't know how many cars and have driven countless lowered vehicles and never have come across any serious alignment issues.