Alignment with lowering springs

[MSTCBRA]

I have a 96 Mystic Cobra with 40k miles. It’s mostly stock except SVE lowering springs and Flowmaster exhaust. Bought it a year ago already lowered. The negative camber is fairly extreme but it drives good. My question is can I get it aligned without having to put on caster camber plates. Id prefer to not add that aftermarket piece. Thanks in advance.

 

[lwarrior1016]

I have a 96 Mystic Cobra with 40k miles. It’s mostly stock except SVE lowering springs and Flowmaster exhaust. Bought it a year ago already lowered. The negative camber is fairly extreme but it drives good. My question is can I get it aligned without having to put on caster camber plates. Id prefer to not add that aftermarket piece. Thanks in advance. View attachment 30368

Camber plates are honestly going to be your best bet. If you're dead set on not doing anything like that, then you could get camber bolts that bolt in to the strut and are oval to allow some adjustment. I don't like them, but they do work to an extent, and nobody knows anything changed.

 

[Rod]

Disclosure - I have owned a 95 GT for about 25 years and I used to be ASE certified in chassis repair and alignment. There is already camber adjustment built into the stock upper bushing plate. That is why they are slotted. If you can't get the correct amount of camber or if you caster is way off that is when you want to look at caster/camber plates. Take it to a reputable ALIGNMENT shop. Not a shop that happens to do alignments.
Edit- Forgot to say that's a great looking car. Always loved the Mystic & MystiChrome paint jobs.

 

[RAU03MACH]

mine dose sit pretty low
but i did install lower Controle arms and struts
i have a pretty good alignment shop here and he is able to align the front pretty well
i do not have the caster plates on it
i do have a bump steer kit

 

[joemomma]

You can probably get it in the ballpark without adding anything aftermarket, but you likely won't be able to get it spot-on. Is there any reason you're not wanting to add anything aftermarket?

 

[Mustang5L5]

There's some adjustability, but not much in the stock plates. Best chance of success is to pull the front wheels off. Put a jack under the balljoint and jack up just high enough to put weight on the jack and compress the spring a tad. Loose the two strut to spindle bolts slightly. If you push/pull the shock body in and out, you'll find that there is a small bit of adjustability in camber here. How much depends on which struts you have. Pull the strut body outwards and then tighten up both strut bolts and torque to spec.

Up top, with weight of the spring still on the jack you can drill out the two rivets that hold the factory plates to a certain position and loosen the bolts a tad and pull the camber plate outwards as far as it will go. Retighten and lower the car to the ground. See where you are and decide if you need C/C plates or not. Obviously you'll need to realign the car here after these changes, but this will give you an idea if you will able to get the camber around 1/2 degree neg to 0 degrees or if you need to call up Max Motorsports and order some C/C plates. If oyu don't want C/C plates you can install some offset camber bolts in the strut to try and give you a little more adjustability. Repeat the same process and see if that gets you close to where you need to be.

I just did Ford G springs (Eibach Pro-kit) on my convertible that only dropped about 3/4" and elected to install the MM plates. Install was pretty easy. About 30 mins per side. You do have to drill that 4th hole, but I was able to do it without fuss.

 

[joemomma]

I'm running Eibach Sportlines with SVE CC plates. The shop could only get it to -1 degree, even with the plates (and even then they had to elongate some holes due to fender alignment with my aftermarket Cobra hood). That's fine, I don't drive the car all that much and it handles nicely.

 

[MSTCBRA]

You can probably get it in the ballpark without adding anything aftermarket, but you likely won't be able to get it spot-on. Is there any reason you're not wanting to add anything aftermarket?

I’d prefer to not install the cc plates because it’s so close to stock and a Mystic. I know of a Mustang shop with a rack. Will contact them after winter and get it done with as little mods as possible. Thanks!

 

[cobrajeff96]

-1* is just fine. Even 1.25* (or 1.15') is fine. It's when that car approaches 1.5* (or 1.30') on the street that it starts to get a little excessive.

And I'm not 100% sure on stock gear, but the strut bolt eyelets do allow for some camber adjustment. You'd just loosen the bolts slightly so the strut can move about the spindle and grab it by the top of the rotor and pull hard toward you. Worst case is it's already maxed out on the positive direction or there was never any factory adjustment provision to begin with.

I will say the Maximum Motorports c/c plates are probably the best, very popular, and do actually look sexy. Makes any and all future alignments hella easy as well. Really no downside to them other than about 1 hour of labor to install them. And they are a coilover must-have.

 

[ttocs]

And everybody loves max motorsports!

 

[Mustang5L5]

The stock struts have less camber adjustments in the spindle bolts than aftermarkets. I checked on this when I replaced mine a month or so ago. There is a little movement, but not much.

In comparison the bilstiens I put in have more “slop” so you can get a degree or so of adjustment.

The only “negative” with MM caster camber plates is you have to drill one additional hole in your strut tower. I can certainly see this being a turn-off for some, but on the other hand, most folks view MM parts as top-tier so it may not be a detriment to see a properly installed set of Mm plates on a clean low-mileage car.

I’d just loosen the struts-spindle bolts, pull the body out and tighten, and then align with the stock plates and see what you get.

In hindsight, my Eibach Pro-kit barely lowered my car and I totally could have gotten the car in spec with the stock C/C plates. I didn not need my Mm plates