SPC Lower Front Ball Joints - Our Quest for Camber Pt.2

In part 1 of our camber quest we tackled the back half of the car by adding in some rear camber arms from SPC. They allowed us to get the car a more square contact patch for sweeping turns and made sure that our tire was safe from ever touching the rear fender.

Today we move our attention to the front in hopes of getting more camber out of the drive tires and really helping this amazing chassis carve up the corners. For this installment, we are adding in some SPC front lower adjustable ball joints.

The SPC lower ball joint comes in 3 different options. One size that is designed to add +1 degree of positive camber, one size that is designed to remove -1 degree of negative camber, and one that is neutral and thus is a direct OEM style replacement.

If you recall in our Ground Control install the coil over sleeves that we had purchased were supposedly going to give us up to -5 degrees of camber upfront but that ended up not being the case at all. The most we could squeeze out was around -2 to -2.25 and that was not enough for us. Our target on the track is around -3 to -4 depending on how much turn in we want. Remember that on a FWD car, by adding more negative camber to the front wheels and tires we help decrease understeer and allow the car to rotate much more easily. We want the car to rotate faster because we want to spend less time in the corners.

PART BREAKDOWN

Manufacture: SPC

Part #: 67381 (sold per ball joint, will need Qty 2x)

Components: One slotted lower front ball joint, one cotter pin and castle nut, mounting hardware

Specs:

• Up to -1 degree of camber for the 2016 Honda Civic

• Up to -.5 degree of camber for the 2016 Honda CRV and Accord

• Extended length helps improve overall camber gain

Installation of the front ball joints is pretty straight forward but do be ready for some work if you have not touched the front suspension of your car for a while. To install these it will be required that you remove the outboard portion of the CV axle because you will need to get access to the castle nut and cotter pin to both remove and install the new ball joint (Note: Removal of the axle can be avoided if you have a specialty ball joint separator tool).

You will also be removing the joint from the lower steering knuckle. If the car lives in a rust heavy part of the world then you could be in for a fight as you try and separate the physical joint from the knuckle. Having the appropriate tools in this area will be key. Luckily the bottom half of the joint is super easy to swap because unlike some cars that use a pressed-in unit your Civic and Accord simply use 3 studs and nuts that an impact gun will make quick work of.

Here is a HELPFUL video created by SPC that walks through the process.

After the install we immediately checked our front camber settings and were pleased to see we got what was advertised. We gained our -1 degrees of front camber as promised. We still have a few more bits to get under the car before we head back to the alignment rack but we are happy with the results so far.

27WON PRO TIP:

We found that when performing endurance racing with stints longer than 30 minutes that the rubber on the lower ball joints was actually being melted off due to excessive brake heat. To combat this we had to make some custom heat shields for the boots. We used bent and formed steel sheets and secured them with the SPC hardware. If this turns out to be a problem for many people, we may look into offering this as a product for like minded racers. Let us know!