Any springs that won't eat tires?
 

My best friend who works as a manager at tires plus used to have a Z and swears that any drop I do I have to get a camber kit or else my rear tires will get half the life. Sooo many people on this website have simple drops. I wanna do one. Is there any springs that will give me a drop but won't tear up my tires like my friend says. Just a plug and play spring drop and then I guess I'll get a realignment after

One piece of advice: don't listen to your friend because he doesn't know what he is talking about. You will not eat your tires after lowering the car and having an alignment done as the camber will be within factory spec and therefore will not have a significant impact on tire life.

The Eibachs and the swift both have a mild enough drop you shouldn't need a camber kit. I think with H and R's you may need to get one, but even with them, it's not like you'll be running hellaflush levels of camber.

:iagree:

it's not the camber, the toe is wat really eats at the tires.

The way kids run camber these days, you can totally destroy tires with camber too.

http://www.iputinwork.com/wp-content...dohcres_01.jpg

http://www.iputinwork.com/wp-content...dohcres_05.jpg


Bye bye tires.


You won't be seeing more than 2.5* with springs though.

i dont think you need me to explain this to you, but just in case, they are a different breed of people with different goals for their cars. obviously we're not talking about VIP setups right now.

no i just dont want my tires to go from 20k miles of life to 11-12 like my friend says bc the camber will be so bad that my tires will just get eaten up

I mean, the h&r springs without a camber kit will likely wear the tire pretty bad.

As long as you get the alignment back to within stock specs, you shouldn't be wearing that much more than normal. Get a camber kit to be safe and get it back to stock specs and you'll be fine with any springs.

camber kit isn't all that expensive, why not get them?

:iagree:

Your friend is right technically!
If you just install your springs you will have negative camber, thats a drifter's build.
Now we can easily fix that negative camber with either an alignment or rear endlinks(camber kit).

I'm in the same boat! Just had the Swift springs installed with a new set of 275/35 and 305/30 tires, and the techs couldn't get the wheels aligned as much as they wanted and suggested ordering the camber kits. They didn't recommend me driving the car much until I get the camber kits and get the wheels aligned again.

They even suggested that I try to raise the FI TDX exhaust cans, but I'm not sure how.

when you lower the car it gives you negative camber right? so does that mean that the insides of ur tires will wear faster?

Not always, depends on who aligns your z. I've noticed with my tires the inside and outside wear evenly. I'm at about 12k.

Depending on the drop he might not be able to get the car back to spec.


I have the swifts and I can tell you that you will need camber arms to get measurements back to spec. Can't speak for eibachs though.



OP if you are interested, I have a set of Nismo springs for sale that will drop you .4'' You should be able to get the car back to spec with those and thus not eating tires. PM me if you're interested.

Edit: Here's the link http://www.the370z.com/parts-sale-pr...-5k-miles.html

Ron, did you get camber arms for the front wheels? I think my front wheels still has a little bit of negative camber. It is currently -1.6 and -1.5 for the front left and right, and -2.6 and -2.5 for the rear left and right. It's probably slightly worse now after a couple of days.

Yep I got front and rear camber arms and adjusted them to the same length as stock when installing for the time being.

Rear camber is pretty noticeable now, fronts don't look that bad but I'm sure I'm out of spec. It's been a week since the install so I'm getting an alignment tomorrow. I'm sure your camber increased if you got the alignment done the same day of the install. It took my front 4 days of driving around to settle from 2in wheel gap to 0.75in

Hope that helps! :)

the reason i was asking was because i havnt lowered mine yet and since my tires in the front wear on the outside more, if i lower it shouldnt it make it wear more evenly without a camber kit (just in the front)?

how strong are the stock non-nismo 370z struts? how long can it withstand a 1-2 inch drop?

Well you are the exception not the rule, as most of us with Swift Spec R's do NOT need camber kits. I was able to get mine to -1.4 front and -1.9 rears.

If you stay under an inch you should be fine. Tein H tech springs have the most mild drop, more so than Swift or Eibach. (about .5" drop I believe) but are harder to find.

you need an alignment. alignments from the factory suck.

OP if youre on the lookout for springs let me know and I can get some for you, Swift are currently on back order, the Tein H tech are special order only and the eibach are good in stock, I'd say one of these 3 won't kill your tires, but definately do an alignment and if you're still unsatisfied buy a camber kit ( the Rear SPC kit is like 200-300 so its not horrible)

damn i had no idea that factory allignments were bad haha. i thought it was just normal for the car. thanks though

Toe eats tires, not camber. The toe is likely going to be what goes way out of spec when you lower the car. The SPC rear camber/toe kit is cheap. Just get that and have it installed when you do your springs. The fronts you'll most likely be OK.

correct, however camber will wear the inside of your tires moreso than the outside, leading to lower treadlife. im "slammed" with no wheel gap with my coils and my front camber is -1.7 and rear is -2.5, but the toe (front/back) was able to be brought back to factory specs without any camber/toe kits. and by the way...my toe was horribly out of spec after my install!

I finally decided to go with the Swift Spec-R lowering springs and SPL rear camber arms and SPC Toe Bolt installed. Some guy from Precision Z told me that the SPC front camber are trash cuz the caster and camber is all together in the same joint so its almost impossible to get alignment back to spec. He said with the mild drop i can get my front pretty close to spec. i hope he's right? cuz im not trying to buy a set of front tires ever other month since my Z is my daily driving car.

yea they can fix toe but it increases your camber. they fight themselves if you dont have a toe kit. that was my understanding during my cars alignmment. they can get camber back to factory but toe starts to go.

bottom line you need a rear camber AND toe kit if you have any signifigant amount of drop. (1"+)