Camber Adjustments (Wheel Alignment)

You look online and you determine the size bolts that hold your strut on right now 10 mm I think is the general You order Camber adjusting bolts. Sometimes called crash bolts the big manufacturer's specialty products corporation if you Google them you can even look it up probably by your car model and get the right bolt usually what I've had to do in the past is either take one of my bolts off or look them up on the Toyota parts and then specialty products will convert that part to their bolt which will come with the bolt with an eccentric in the middle of it and a nut and maybe a washer You only need one per side The person doing the alignment depending upon how much adjustment you need will determine whether to put it in the top or the bottom bolt hole If he's already going to be adjusting camber he's going to take the nuts loose so he might as well take one bolt out bang in the crash bolt make the adjustment lock everything down without too much of a labor hub bub.

 

In my world my belief is you have two degrees almost of negative camera on one side of the car and about a half a degree on the other I would want to try at least in the front end to get that right near just under 1° of negative camber for the front get the toe straightened out which should be just an adjustment and the same with the camber but the camber bolts one on each side and tried it adjust the camber to just about 1° - a little bit less whatever I'm not even sure what it's called for I know in my personal cars I run close to a degree of negative camber and that gives me decent handling very even tire wear etc having 1.5° - camber on one side and what you have on the other and the toe being out should at least be brought into spec. For tire wear sake and all

 

Alignment specs fwiw:

 

By lucky coincidence, camber adjustment got discussed only recently over here. Somebody posted an excerpt from a 2010 manual. [Edit: yup, it was Mendel, who I see has struck again here while I was writing this.] Here are the specs:



Looking at your tire size, and assuming you don't have the Rough Road Package, it looks like your left front camber was spot-on before they fussed with it (unless 2015 specs are changed from 2010).

The right front camber is clearly out of spec, both in absolute terms (it's not within -0.22° ± 0.75°) and relative ones (it's not within ±0.75° of the left front). Ideally, you'd want to shift that 1.18° in the + direction from where they got it. That's quite a change.

Toyota sells those bolts in four flavors: the original factory ones (no pips on the head), and three progressively skinnier ones with one, two, or three pips.

So you start by looking at which two are already there, and match those across the top in Table 1. Looking at how much of a change you want to make, 1.18°, you see the second-last row in the table is for 1.00° to 1.25°. If you are starting with both original no-pip bolts, the table says swap to bolt pattern E (a two-pip on top and a three-pip on the bottom). If you've already got a no-pip and a one-pip, you can swap to pattern F (three-pip bolts top and bottom). If you've got any other combination of bolts there to start with, you're out of luck; there's not enough adjustment left to get the camber in spec (but you could still get it closer by reading up the table until you come to a row with a bolt pattern shown).



You can see the part numbers for the different bolts are also given.

Once the bolts are swapped, the skinnier bolts mean there is more slop in attaching the knuckle to the strut. The key is to finish off by leaning the knuckle in the proper direction (+ in your case) before tightening those bolts.



Because the table above came from a 2010 repair manual, it may be worth checking that nothing changed in the 2015.

Also, if some of the bolts there have already been replaced by aftermarket ones that might not be sized or marked the same way as the Toyota ones, it could be trickier to pick the next combination needed.

For future readers: there's also a Table 2 (see the full thing Mendel attached) for when you need to adjust in the other direction.

 

An alignment place with the proper bolts and what have you should be able to get you in pretty good shape pretty quickly some places carry the specialty products line of front end bolts shims and nuts specialty products could tell you who in your area is approved alignment shop that uses their products or you can take it to the Toyota dealer and they have their own Toyota bolts that are very similar I am sure they will cost more money but he got to do what you got to do.

 

Any Toyota dealer should have them or be able to get them.

There are just four flavors of bolt (no pips, -17019, one pip -17016, two pips -17017, or three pips -17018).

The reason there are seven corrective recipes, A through G, is each recipe requires two bolts. Recipes F and G both involve two bolts of the same flavor, and the other five recipes all have one bolt to go in the top and a different one to go in the bottom.

Can you show your work for how you came up with B or C, when I tried to show my work in post #6 and came out at least E? Are we talking about the same car?

 

I didn't have to do any of the pipping that I remember and if you put the eccentric bolt in the top or the bottom and a regular bolt and the other hole it changes the camber a little more. I use the specialty products brand bolts nuts and washers because they've been doing this a long time I'm not sure that the bolts from the Toyota dealer are the eccentric type except for the last two that talk about moving them from the top to the bottom or vice versa this is discussed on specialty products website too realize they've been making these things for a long time for the alignment industry that's why I went with their bolts I didn't even know Toyota offered crash bolts or didn't initially and so I bought them from specialty products and I would imagine the Toyota dealer wouldn't have these in stock I know they'll get them but my alignment place carries the specialty products and generally will have what can work in my Toyota's on the shelf because it's pretty popular We can also buy the one with the most eccentric or the biggest bump on the eccentric It gives you the most move and said it where you need it and forget it You don't have to worry about the pips or getting the bolts real close to the original size and just a little shaved off so you can get just what you need. I go for the ones with the eccentric and my alignment guy can get me plus 3° and -3° or whatever the movement is close to that It's at least 2° when I was doing this a lot we were auto-crossing cars and so we were looking for about 1.3 to 1.4 negative camber in the front end this was the old days

 

The camber changes more whether you have the adjust bolt with the offset on it in the top of the bottom hole I don't remember which way you can read about this on pretty much any alignment website we'll talk about it on my Auto X cars Toyotas I've had them in both positions I can't remember what ended up being the de facto standard if there is one so usually the regular bolt will be in the bottom of the top and the specialty products or the Toyota offset bolt or whatever Toyota's using just a thinner bolt so you can move I don't know I've never seen the Toyota part I'm guessing they may just be a skinnier bolt the shank so that you can move. Good luck by the way if you want to look online if you look at specialty products corporation I believe it is they will have extensive write-ups and how to's and what have you I do believe

 

Yes, that sounds more like it. When I went through it, it looked like you'd want 1.18° toward positive, which would fall into the 1° to 1.25° row, and that would be pattern E if the bolts you have in there now are both the no-pip original bolts.

If the ones in there now are a no-pip on top and a one-pip on the bottom, you would need to go to pattern F. And if the ones in there now are any more extreme combination than that, there won't be a combination available from Toyota to get you in spec. (And if the ones in there now aren't Toyota bolts, it's hard to say anything.)

So yes, if the ones there now are both no-pip Toyota bolts, then you want to change them to a -17017 in the top and -17018 in the bottom.

Something in your post #8 mentioned B or C, and that's what I was asking about before. Looks like we agree it's more like E or F.

 

-double post-

 

Instead of securing original Toyota camber bolts suggested above, which carries some risk/probability of mismatch, I would think an aftermarket SPC 81290 camber bolts provides an ideal solution here.
Specialty Products Company | SPC Alignment | The Automotive Alignment Leaders

Curious to check if your Prius pulls/drifts to the left on tracking straight ahead driving?

Steering wheel being off-centre, likely to the right on tracking?