CONTROL YOUR ARMS

Control arms.. what are they and why do people spend hundreds of dollars on them?

I recommend reading my suspension blog first

CLICK ME I dare you

Which-Arms?

• Lower Control Arm

• Toe Arms

OK SO WHEN DO I NEED THEM?

The GT86 has no built in adjust-ability from factory so when its time to upgrade you should buy both the LCA and the Toe arms to give you and your preferred workshop the best opportunity to achieve perfect alignment.

You should only NEED these if you have lowered your car substantially and want to dial out negative camber, which forms naturally from lowering. In addition to this, wheels with a very low offset may require you to add a ship-load of camber to fit under your guard, this is where the LCA and Toe arms will come in to play as there is no other means of adjusting camber on the rear.

LCA

Aftermarket LCA's give the ability to adjust the static-camber of the wheel, the adjust-ability comes from the outer most mounting point as can be seen in the image below, right near the brake rotor. There are several different designs for the adjusting point but they all serve the same purpose, to make the arm longer or shorter.

What does what?

• Shorter = Positive camber adjustment

• Longer = Negative camber adjustment

TOE

So you went and bought LCA's to correct your camber and now your wheel alignment shop is telling you they can't achieve proper toe settings... You start googling for answers and you discover that adjusting camber directly affects your toe settings. Then you find out your 86 toe arms look like the pic below. It's not all bad news if you haven't slammed your car, the oem arms will allow you to correct toe for up to 4-5 degrees of negative camber via an eccentric bolt. Incorrect toe settings will destroy your tyres quickly and lead to undesired handling characteristics.

So what does what?

• Shorter = Toe in

• Longer = Toe out

Usually the rear toe is "in" to help with braking stability to stop the rear end overtaking the front.

Eccentric bolt adjustment as below:

Adjustment points on the aftermarket toe arm (circled):

Summing it up

You're not going to need these arms if you have lowered your car by a couple of cm's. But if you genuinely reach a point where the factory arms cannot compensate for your setup then you must buy them both. Alternatively, if you're buying these purely for style points and how they look from behind, then I say all the power to you as there are no drawbacks to buying them for that purpose besides the $$$ spent.

When it comes down to getting a wheel alignment, please make sure you go to a workshop that is recommended by your local car club and ask for a wheel alignment setting sheet to ensure they have adjusted both front and back alignment.

END

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