are the coilover camber plates suppose to be facing at an 11'o clock angel? The adjustment doesn't seem to be point straight out. The coilovers only fit one way. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, it feels like I am missing something. My friend has done a lot of coilover installs on 240sx's and b14's (which seem similar to our set up). Also, the d2's are used from a 2k1 AE edition and my car is a 2000; I am not sure if the suspension bolts are any different since supposedly the 10/99 5th gens (I think its that production) is different than latter 5th gens. Any help ASAP please and I will post pics in about 1/2 an hour. THanks again.

 

Front Passanger:

Front Driver:

 

I think you have them on the wrong side. Mine are horizontial.

 

I tried swapping sides and that didn't work. heck we tried it four or five times to check.

 

that sux...they are suppose to be horizontal from what I know...both my D2s and Ksports were horizontal and they fit perfectly

 

The installation is not done correctly, the ajustement of camber should right -left or vice versa, not front - rear. Definitely your D2 are not properly installed, I would not drive the car with the way it is now.

 

I talked to the guy who I bought them from and he said that he installed the d2's the same way and drove them like that. I am not doing that because I know camber adjustment only goes from side to side. The camber plates will only bolt up one way due to the unequal distances between the bolts. If I push the orientation of the camber to go side to side like normal, two bolts will go in but the third bolt is way off.

 

I wonder if it could be a production error. This would be the third one i've seen. You are right, it only fits one way because of the camber plate bolt pattern. However it could be possible that you have the left side on the right side and vice versa. Its hard to make out in the pictures

 

What pictures would you like? I can get anything.

 

would you happen to have pictures of the top hats side by side? And maybe a larger picture of the top hats installed via a engine bay shot

 

Engine bay shots:


Top hat comparison

Measurements of the distance between the outer bolts

 

Metal washer orientation comparison on car vs on strut bolt (driver side):

 

If you look at one of my old pictures, the D2 logo should be facing outwards



And the 1 bolt that is the "point" should be facing inwards

 

although I think on yours, the the "point" is actually in a different location (in the picture, it looks to be the hole counter clockwise from the red arrow)

 

I contacted Mike at UI and I am just waiting for his reply. If anything, how much do you think a top hat replacement would be? I am thinking that this would be the only thing I would have to replace, correct?

 

Check where your d2 logo is facing from the bottom of the car first. Hopefully other d2 owners that have some more shots can confirm this also.

Then figure out if you need a new top hat

 

subscribing

 

d2 logo location if I line the bolts up (passanger):

driver side if I properly place camber adjustment but bolts will not align:

 

judging buy post 12 they are drilled wrong.
the d2 logo face out and the stud across from it is nearest the motor.

 

Ok, just pulled mine out from the closet. I think yours may be machined wrong.

your picture used as reference:


My D2 top hat measures-
white dot to blue dot: 3-7/8th inches
white dot to green dot: 3-7/8th inches
blue dot to green dot: 3-3/8th inches (base of the triangle)
white dot is the "point" of the triangle

IIRC, the "point" goes in the outer most hole from the engine bay when the d2 logo faces outside

 

Hey larrio, would this be considered a manufacturers defect then and would it be covered even outside of warranty? The last thing I can do is contact paypal and file the Reimbursement claim. If I can avoid that just by swapping the camber plates I'd be good to go. Also, the guy before me ran the camber plates as mentioned above in the incorrect position, so would that have done any damage to the struts?

 

I doubt there are any damage to the struts. However if you run them that way, your camber will have some drastic issues since your front suspension is not being cambered properly. With the camber adjustment going diagonally....

I consider that a huge defect and would check to see if UI can cover it for you

 

they are caster adjusters now lol

 

they are neither

 

that freakin sux...well you can always run the plates like that without harming anything right? just adjust the camber through the lower bolt?

 

you can adjust the camber through the lower bolts, however you can never be sure that the top plate is in the neutral stock position. Especially now since its diagonal, his caster and camber will be offset and he's unable to know how to make changes and where

 

going back to my ghetto "blown struts and chopped maxspeed" set up... sucks mang.

 

UI will probably tell u that the rest of their mounts are the same as there should be no difference in manufacture of the mounts. That's what they told me when I called about my rear mounts. They wanted me to dremel my car to make it fit. Luckily I was able to make it fit finally by hammering the bolts to make it fit the bolt hole. Good luck.

 

See what Mike at UI says. I would point him to this thread as well as it shows a good amount of evidence that its a manufacturing defect.

 

Do you know what was the end results of the owners of those d2's?

 

foodmanry had a defect on the lower bottom mount and had it replaced. Apparently Iilac made it work and another person had a defective lower mount got it replaced also.

UI should NOT say that they are all made this way. The stupid suspension has diagonal adjustments, its not camber and its not caster....

 

Did yesterday and now awaiting reply. I am hoping that all I have to do is swap camber plates and have them send it to me since that would be so much cheaper than sending the two front struts to them.

 

I just don't understand why people are wasting there money on these coilovers. From everything I've read on the ORG they are trash. Nothing but noisy crap......................Who wants to hear noise over bumps all the time no matter how cool the car looks...

 

Just for more visualization purposes:
The three bolts on the camber plate make an isosceles triangle (two even lengthed sides and a base). A correct camber plate has a base opposite the side of the D2 logo. I'm trying to show here that ChromeSE5's camber "base" is the same side as the D2 logo

ChromeSE5's camber plate:

The MS paint lines that I drew show clearly that his base is the D2 logo and the "point" is the blue dot. Whereas on mine the point of the triangle is the WHITE dot and the base is from the green to blue dot, clearly showing that the base is not on the same side as the D2 logo.

Now just look at the picture below, disregard the triangular shape since i'm using ChromeSE5's picture. Now if you take the stock strut tower position and overlay my simulated D2 camber plates (match up the yellow line to black line), you will see the camber adjustment will be correct and the D2 logo will face outwards to the vehicle. Red is
passenger side and green is driver side. This is the way it should be

So if you are looking from the front of the car towards the engine bay....



Another point to make is that since his D2 logo is diagonal, that means the "point" of his camber plate matches up with the "point" on the strut tower, therefore making the "base" of his camber plate the D2 logo. This means that it is machined wrong, IMO

 

Thanks Larrio, for the diagrams.

 

both sides are the same mount. this is most likely a manufacturing defect. something has been machined wrong. who knows how many defective plates have been produced. i wonder if the 4th gen mounts are wrong also.

 

It does appear from these pictures that the top mounts on this coilover was machined incorrectly. We have seen this once before (out of over 100 sets of A32 and A33 that we have imported). I will discuss this with the manufacturer this evening.

Your situation was nothing like this. He isn't saying the bolts don't fit, he is saying the camber plates don't line up properly. In your case you were saying the rear mounts weren't fitting in by less than a MM, as i told you over the phone sometimes it just takes a little extra work to get them in. I have seen this on TEIN and Buddy Club as well. Glad you were able to get things worked out.


Then you must not have read that many threads. The noise issue was fixed a year ago and everyone with defective coilovers was sent replacements.

 

Mike at UrbanImport is a reputable seller and i'm glad at least he is trying to work out this issue with D2. I bought my D2's from him when they first came out, and he worked out a blow strut issue I had in the first batch of coilovers.

Hopefully D2 can fix this problem for ChromeSE5

 

Thanks for looking into the problem. hopefully we can remedy this problem soon

 

I hope this all works out soon....I can't believe that I didn't realize this when I had the coilovers on my car, I feel like such a dork now.......hopefully I didn't jack my tires up too bad...