The lobe is eccentric, not a circle...see the above picture. It must be the washers which hold it, and I absolutely abused the last vehicle I had these on...towed it 60K miles behind a big diesel motorhome (a good 700 miles of which was on semi-paved and gravel Alaska/Yukon roads, at speed), drove it another 30K, and I welcomed pretty much any off-road challenge. They never slipped. I trust 'em for the RX's on-road use....

 

You are right. To only allow front to back adjustment (give) the lobe can not be a perfect round. The force of the aqueeze has to take the forces of braking and serious road bumps.

A perfect round but not concectric with the bolt, would have been a better engineered solution, but it would move the strut attachment point in that circle.


Thank you for putting up with my quest of better understanding.

Salim

 

All four corners are done, and here's the skinny.

The bolts are slightly smaller in diameter than the OEM ones. There is an eccentric lobe which is present only on the part of the bolt which will 'live' inside the strut's housing.

The difference in bolt diameter is taken up by a tab on the included washer, which centers the smaller bolt in the hole. There is a tab on the outside of the washer, but it has no function I can see, though it is useful in turning the washer to seat the tab in the open area between the bolt and the hole. The tab which goes in the hole is opposite the one which is external, i.e. the easy one to see in the picture.

These have 1* of adjustment. I am using the full degree on the fronts, about .75 of a degree on the RR, and about 50% of a degree on the LR.

I know many will claim you absolutely, without a doubt, must use an alignment rig to get the camber spot on. This is the second car I've done, and honestly, if you have a bubble level, or even a good eye, you don't need an alignment setup of any sort.

First, you must make certain the surface on which the car is sitting is level. If it isn't, it'll never be correct via the bubble level, ever. Also, don't put the level on the tire, use the wheel. Why? The wheel doesn't have molded lettering on it, among other things....

I eyeball it, but double-check with the level, and the human eye can easily see, at least mine can, a quarter of a degree. The key is not using curved or angled surfaces to compare the wheel's camber. For example, the rear mini-mud flap things are not straight, so you can't use those, but your eye really wants to.

Here is the front eccentric camber adjusting bolt, on the left, compared to the OEM, non-adjustable bolt, on the right. There are people who claim these will slip out of place, but should that happen, you didn't put a proper amount of torque on them in the first place. The locking teeth on the washer are there purely as a conveinence during installation, so it doesn't move when you get it all seated.

I torqued mine down to 120 lb. ft./135 newton meters, which is about what it required to get the old ones off. Well, one front one required close to 180 lb. ft. to remove, but that was because of corrosion.