Hi all, I recently had a set of true coilovers installed on my G37xS coupe, and I also had adjustable front and rear camber arms, and adjustable rear toe arms to replace the mid-link (along with the eccentric lock-out kit). My plan was to have shop #1 install the suspension pieces and get them close to stock as possible, then i was going to adjust ride height and general wheel fitment, and then take it to shop #2 that has a suspension dyno for alignment and fine adjustments of the suspension components. I got the car back from shop #1 yesterday, and found a couple things that I would like to address before my alignment appointment on Thursday (4 days from now). As I left the shop, I made kind of a sharp turn and saw my traction control light briefly illuminate. I half expected that I might run into something like this before the alignment, and made a mental note to check the car when I got home. Although I set the pre-load and height setting of all 4 coilovers the same prior to dropping the car off at shop #1, once home I noticed the driver's front and passenger rear wheels were almost 3/4" higher than the other two wheels. No worries, this is a fairly easy fix. Just remove the wheel, adjust the coilover height, replace wheel, check measurements. And that's what I did last night. Got all four corners to match on both sides of the car. Approximately 26.5" in the front and 26.75" in the rear.

When I took the car for a test drive last night, I noticed that my steering wheel was still not centered, but now it was favoring the left instead of the right, like when I picked the car up earlier in the day. Everything was good on the 10 minute drive @ ~25mph. But this morning I had to run an urgent errand in the car, and on the way home, I noticed the steering wheel was pulling even harder to the left and now the traction control light is lit all the time. My current hypothesis is that shop #1 didn't tighten everything down well, and something has slipped far out of spec. I'd like to try to apply some correction to my suspension setup before my alignment, because I don't want to totally ruin my brand new tires before then. I'm driving as little as possible right now, and as slow as possible when I do go out.

Can anyone walk me through the troubleshooting process here? My initial thinking is that I'm going to inspect the front upper control arms first, and make sure the camber adjuster bolts didn't come loose. If they did (and even if they didn't), then I would try to set both arms the same by measuring the difference between current position and max position, and comparing the value for both sides. I'm also planning to check the rear adjustable arms to make sure all the bolts are tight, and I initially heard some knocking that was eliminated by tightening the bolts on passenger rear toe arm last night. But how can I check if the rear toe is off? I'm a bit wary of just setting lengths to be equal on each side, because that didn't seem to work very well for the coilovers. And although it's not really the answer I'm looking for, "don't drive it. just flatbed it to the alignment shop" is an answer i'd be willing to accept.

 

The car feeling very off prior to an alignment is normal for the amount of adjustable parts you tossed on. When I threw in a set of rear camber arms and toe bolts my steering wheel was very off until my alignment.
Aside from ensuring everything is tightened and torqued to spec I would just wait until the alignment is completed before trying to troubleshoot or make any adjustments yourself. Front toe is pretty easy to set at home with just a tape measurer(you can google a how to) and camber can be done with a camber gauge to get into a ballpark range. Rear toe can't be done without a string set up. I would just not drive the car much until the alignment is completed.

Not sure about the traction light coming but I'm going to assume the AWD system isn't liking the current alignment, that's just a guess though.
Setting the arm lengths to the same measurement is just a place to start, it may help but likely not. Again best to just get it on the rack and have it properly aligned.

Pulling left or right will have to do the alignment but also the road surface you're driving on. Roads that appear flat are almost never actually flat and will bank to one side or another.
I'm not sure what a "suspension dyno" is but I'm assuming it's a shock dyno, which would have no use in setting your alignment. I hope the shop you've chosen is good with aftermarket adjustable suspension because there will a good amount of tweaking to get everything set up right.

 

Ok, you've basically confirmed what I was thinking.

As for the "suspension dyno" that's what several performance shops around here call their fancy alignment systems. I'm going to a shop that is knowledgeable about motorsports applications, so I assume they know what they are doing. Here's a pic from their "Services" page where they talk about suspension and alignment:



Those look like laser targets, and I trust lasers.
/s