R&R right rear toe adjust arm

[4agdtym]

I had an alignment recently and the tech said the right rear wheel is at its maximum adjust and still is .3 degrees out of spec. He suggested the toe adjust arm needs to be replaced. I'm sceptical, but ordered and recieved the part. Upon exam, it appears the current arm is too long (the concentric is at its maximum and the wheel still needs to rotate further). The car has been aligned (apparently) without difficulty about a year ago - different shop, and I'm not aware of hitting anything hard enough to have bent any part of the arm.

Any tips or potential difficulties in replacing the arm? Any other thoughts?

Thanks,

David

[Bladecutter]

I picked up a '98 Boxster back in mid February.

When I took it in for an alignment, they said that they had adjusted the left rear camber as far as it could go, but they could not get it into specs, but the right rear was well within spec.

They said that is was one of two things that was the cause:

There was a blown shock in the rear of the car, and that needed to be replaced, and that was their #1 guess at the cause of the issue.

Oddly enough, the blown shock turned out to be on the right rear when I inspected the parts later.

The other thing was that one of the ball joints (either the one on the toe arm, or on the main lower arm) had worn enough to require replacement.

They recommended that I replaced the rear shocks first, and then see if the alignment can be set properly after that.

Well, I waited for the rear Bilstein's to come in, and I replaced them myself.

When I took the car back to the shop the next day, they were able to bring the whole car fully into specs (the left front was also just barely out of spec), and they said that everything looks perfect on the car now.

Also, after replacing the rear shocks, the shudder noise I was getting from the right rear of the car when I was accelerating around a sharp right turn had vanished completely. That was caused by the RR shock not being able to keep the tire firmly planted to the ground.

So, if you have a shudder noise when trying to put the power down while turning either sharp right or left, then it is possibly a blown rear shock on that side the shudder comes from. If there isn't any shudder, you will most likely want to see if any of the ball joints in the rear of the car have any amount of free play at the hub knuckle.

BC.

Edited March 24, 2009 by Bladecutter