WRX Alignment Guide

Parts that restore adjustment

Setups by use

These are directional rather than prescriptive - your shop and your owner's manual are the authority on specific figures, and the right numbers depend on your tires, ride height and roads. **Street, stock height.** Factory specification. There is nothing to gain from deviating on a car that is not lowered and is driven on roads. Get toe correct and leave it. **Street, lowered.** The goal is bringing camber back toward reasonable rather than chasing performance figures. Some negative camber is unavoidable and mild amounts are fine - they improve cornering grip slightly at a small cost in straight-line tire wear. What you want to avoid is the several degrees that a significant drop produces uncorrected. **Aggressive wheel fitment.** Owners running wide setups sometimes deliberately run more rear negative camber, commonly in the region of -2.0 to -2.5 degrees, to tuck the top of the tire away from the flare. That is a fitment solution as much as a handling one, and it requires adjustable arms. **Track use.** Considerably more front negative camber is wanted, in the -2.5 to -3.5 degree region, which needs camber plates or adjustable top mounts rather than camber bolts. This is a compromise on a street car because it increases inner tire wear during normal driving. The general principle: more negative camber helps cornering and hurts straight-line tire life. Choose based on which you do more of.

Working with the shop

A few things make the appointment go better. **Tell them the car is lowered** and by roughly how much. It changes what they expect to find and what they will tell you about adjustment range. **Tell them how you drive it.** A shop will bias a setup differently for a commuter than for someone doing track days, and most will ask if you give them the opening. **Ask for a printed before-and-after sheet.** It is the record you compare against next time and the evidence if something is out of range. Keep it with your service records. **Ask what they could not adjust.** This is the question that saves a return visit. If rear camber is out of specification and they had no way to correct it, you want to know that explicitly rather than discovering it from tire wear later. **Find a shop that knows lowered cars.** Not every alignment technician is used to working outside factory ranges, and one who is will give you a better result and better advice. And re-align after any change to ride height, wheel offset or tire size - not only after lowering. All three change how the car sits and what the geometry does.

The verdict

Get an alignment after any suspension or ride height change, and get it after the car has settled rather than the same day. Understand what your car allows before you book: toe front and rear, limited front camber via camber bolts, and rear camber and caster requiring parts. That knowledge turns a confusing alignment sheet into a clear decision. If you lowered the car significantly, budget for adjustable rear control arms as a likely follow-up rather than a surprise. Roughly $240 to $360 for a pair is far cheaper than the set of tires an uncorrected alignment will destroy. And resist chasing aggressive numbers on a street car. Mild negative camber is a reasonable trade. Track-oriented figures on a commuter buy you cornering grip you rarely use and cost you inner tire shoulders you replace constantly.