Honda Civic Forum - Woohoo, I did my own alignment!

Well, I wish you guys could see this huge smirk of accomplishment on my face right now. Unfortunately, you can't so :D .
Now, its not necessarily easy, but its not hard either. Camber plates make the job super easy :2pimp: ... one of the few nice perks of an $1800 suspension :rockon: . BUT, that wasn't everything. You need to have the knuckles evenly set before you can start, and even with stock crash bolts, thats not a given. Basically here's the quick deal... and all I did was set the camber.
First off, I pulled out the camber bolts, those damn things moved all over on me. I put in their place a set of Honda Genuine 14mm Crash bolts (AKA stock ones). Instantly, my alignment went from -.75 to -3.5 degrees. While that would be fricken awesome, Even my 420 Treadwear Kumho ASXs would hate that. Not to mention the serious toe in problem. <---- this answers a previous question about swapping crash bolts and no toe effect.... it changes it a lot. The other thing to know about is how to get them even. The best way to do this is to put as much camber in the knuckle as you can. To do this, loosen the crash bolts (both of them) and get someone to push UP and IN on the brake rotor. This should tilt the knuckle inwards, then retighten and torque the crash bolts to 110 ft-lbs to hold the setting. Next thing you're gonna need is a flat, level area the size of the car or larger, a camber gauge (www.racerpartswholesale.com, RPW9500, $39.99) and some time. Put the car on said level spot with the wheels on, rock it back and forth a few times and make sure the steering wheel is DEAD STRAIGHT. If its not, you're screwed before you start. Now... take said camber gauge and measure each side... compare measurements. The camber gauge is a simple device... its simply an adjustable bubble level. You turn a knob, it moves the level... when you hit the line, assuming you've counted the number of turns of the knob, you'll have your camber measurement. Rock the car around again and re-measure. If you got the same thing twice, you're golden. If you're not happy with the angle, you can adjust it with camber plates, cam/offset type crash bolts, or go back and move the knuckle. Moving the knuckle somewhere in between the 2 extremes gets difficult because you need to get both sides even. You can tinker it into place with a hammer if you have to (hit the knuckle, not the strut bracket), but no one really likes to bang on their car. If you've got different values side to side, you can still do it with cam bolts, but camber plates wouldn't be ideal since you want to keep them even. If you're taking the plate route, go back to the knuckle and make sure you've got them pressed all the way in. If they're in as far as they'll go on both sides, you should have them even, in which case you can set the camber plates to the same tick mark on both sides.
Now... as it stands right now, my car has -1.5 degrees of camber up from -.75 deg, and I've still got a pesky little 1/8" toe in. Since its 10:00 PM, I'm just going to take it to the alignment place tomorrow and let them set it to 0... but I took it for a drive, my steering is dead nuts center. Not bad for my first attempt at this.