Hello, I’m currently having the issue with excessive positive camber. I’m stumped on what to do. I had previously owned this car (02 sl1) and just recently bought it back. It had a bad wheel bearing so I replaced the bearing as well as a whole spindle, brakes, tires, and rotors then put it back together and saw this issue. I decided to try camber bolts and put a new sway bar and control arms on thinking it could be that but once again, no change. At this point I’m unsure what could be causing such a drastic camber and would like to fix this issue so I can stop throwing money at it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

When you say spindle, do you mean the knuckle that bolts between the strut and the ball joint? The camber is adjusted where the knuckle bolts to the strut. Replace one of two bolts with an adjustable reduced shank bolt. Unless something is bent or an incorrect part is installed the car should align.

 

Yes the knuckle. I noticed when I leave the bottom bolt hole open I can straighten it completely but then the hole no longer aligns with the strut hole. I replaced the bottom with a cam bolt and it’s made it just a tad bit better but still not enough. Right now I’m assuming maybe the ball joint hole isn’t sat on exactly where it needs to be, looks more flat then angled but can’t get the angle where I need nor know if it can really go the way I want lol.

 

Where did you get the knuckle and lower control arm? Was the control arm new? Was the knuckle used, complete with the wheel bearing and hub? If it was off a wrecked car it could be bent.

 

Whenever you remove the front sway bar, you need to replace the sway bar bushings and use a new bolt on the parts that hold them in place. Otherwise they are likely to back out.
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You must also be sure that the stabilizer bar is perfectly centered before locking it down in the bushings. It's a pain in the ***, but to do so, you need to partially reattach the control arm to the subframe and make sure the effort needed to get the end of the sway bar through the control arm bushing is essentially equal between the two sides.
​​​​​​ If you don't do this, the geometry will never be correct and if you are far enough off, you may end up in a situation such as yours.

An alternative is to remove the front stabilizer bar and pre attach the control arms to the ends of the stabilizer bar, then be sure to center it as best you possibly can. You will know how well you've done when you go to attach the ball joint castle nut because if the ball joints don't line up equally, the sway bar is a bit off center.

I would always have to fight to get the front struts into the top of the knuckle when installing control arms with the stabilizer bar still attached.

Eventually I became frustrated enough and loosened the stabilizer bar mounts in the front. The whole thing shifted about half an inch forward, likely from bushing wear and rotated by quite a few degrees. I pre-assembled the control arms onto the front stabilizer bar, replaced the stabilizer bar bushings. Putting everything back together was easy peasy and there was almost no lateral stress necessary to fit the bottom of the struts into the knuckle.

The control arm attaches to the knuckle below the center of the hub, so being out of position or having a bent part can cause issues. The strut mounting holes on the knuckle are above the center of the hub and are used to tweak the camber, as the strut and knuckle mount are not parallel to each other.

A solution for this if there is simply not enough adjustment for camber and you have tried everything above is to further oval out the mounting holes in the knuckle that receive the strut. Because of the angle mentioned above, this creates more adjustment for camber.

But as Andy has said, make sure you are not working with bent or compromised components before you take on the effort mentioned above.
I was lucky enough to find a local tire shop that had worked on Saturn alignment issues in the past and knew exactly how to further extend the oval openings on the knuckle.

I should add that a large red flag that your stabilizer bar bushings are in need of replacement is that the caster is way out of spec. Once you replace these bushings with ones that are not deformed and dried out, it moves the stabilizer bar towards the back of the car just enough to address the caster issues and for me part of the camber issue I was having.

For the life of the vehicle, I did not know there was a caster spec that could actually be addressed. No tire shop bothered to measure it. It was way out of spec and very uneven left to right, causing sloppy handling on the highway.

If your tire shop does not know there is a caster spec nor how to expand the camber adjustment range, go somewhere else. Caster does not affect tire wear, but if far enough out of spec, it can affect handling, especially at higher speeds.

Quite the mouthful I know, but I have lived through it and this is how it was addressed to get the vehicle back into alignment.