Rear Camber Correction, Washer Method

[simplegreen]

This Do It Yourself article will show you how to correct negative camber in the rear end of your 92-00 Civic. The model shown is a 1995 Civic sedan, but the steps are identical for 92-95 Civics, and should be the same (or very similar) for 96-00 Civics. This may apply to other cars with similar rear suspension geometry. The author of this article is not responsible for any damage or injury you or anyone else may cause as a result of this article. Proceed at your own risk.


What you need:

? size washers
? size longer bolts
14mm socket and ratchet
9 or 12 inch extension for ratchet


Images are clickable for larger versions.


1. Getting started

Place your car in park (auto) or in gear (manual) and block off the front wheels.

Loosen the lug nuts on your rear wheels.

Raise the rear end of your car and place it on jack stands. The lower rear cross-member is a great place to set your jack stands.



Pick one side of the car.

Remove lug nuts, remove wheel.




2. Seeing what you're going to do

Now that you have the wheel off, take a quick look at your rear suspension. What you're going to do is place shims behind the upper control arm mount, effectively making your upper control arm longer- which will increase positive camber. This will help you minimize negative camber at the rear end of your car.

The red box shows where you'll be making the modifications:



This is a closeup picture of the upper control arm's inner mount:




3. Let's fix your camber!

It's a good idea to support the lower control arm since you'll be unbolting the inner mount of the upper arm- you don't want the suspension to bounce free as soon as you take the bolts out. Use a jack to support the lower control arm just under the shock's mount point, but don't compress the shock much. As soon as you see the shock start to budge, stop raising the jack.



Count out your washers. You'll want to use one washer for each .5 degrees of camber that you want to correct. If you're correcting camber that's not a multiple of .5, measure out washers so that you still have a slight bit of negative camber. A little bit of negative camber in the rear is generally better than positive... If you need to use more than 2 washers, you might want to buy longer bolts too. This makes sure you have enough thread engagement to hold your suspension together after you're done.

I had to correct -1.6 degrees of camber, so I counted out 3 washers per bolt.



Unbolt the inner mount on the upper control arm. Your ratchet and extension help quite a bit here- the space is a little tight.

Place your washers over the end of your bolts. This picture shows the bolt on the left with the washers, and the one on the right without:



This shows a closeup of the inner mount with washers on both bolts:



Bolt it back in, and torque to ?? lbft.


4. Finish up

Your suspension is back together again! Remove the jack from the lower control arm, replace the wheel, and thread the lug nuts back on finger-tight.

Repeat this all on the other side of the car so your camber is fixed there too.

Lower the car, then torque your lugs nuts down to 80lbft.



Drive it slowly to make sure that everything is ok, then head to your favorite shop to get an alignment. Your toe settings may have changed, and incorrect toe can really accelerate tire wear... once your alignment is set, you're all done! You just fixed your rear camber.

Writen by: Calesta