Roxiz0604

I recently replaced my rack and pinion wheel bearings and hubs and compression rods, and about six months before that I've redid All the lower arms and ball joints so all the suspension is new in the front and took it to get it aligned and my Caster is off??? Its in the 5. something range. As I understand it this can't be adjusted with an alignment so I'm just wondering if it's something that I did when replacing the rod?
!added note i have bilstiens on the front!

Sundown72

Caster isn’t adjustable on a stock Z33.

If you have adjustable upper control arms that can adjust caster, adjust them. If you have stock UCAs your problem is elsewhere.

For my own curiosity, do you have stock lower front control arms? Or aftermarket?

I got some aftermarket cheap LCAs where the taper for the ball joint was cut incorrectly. This meant the taper washer (cone thing) that acts as the interface between the ball joint and the spindle wouldn’t seat right and would shift slightly. That might alter the caster, camber and would make the toe impossible to adjust.

Other things to consider are poorly made compression arms that are not dimensionally identical to stock, moving the distance between the pivots forward or back.

Also, more caster isn’t always bad, you get more self centering and camber gain on the outside wheel. But you also get more positive camber gain and jacking on the inside wheel, so...not necessarily ideal.

Roxiz0604

The lower front arms are after market I know what you're talking about because I had to search for the correct ones with (cone thing). I did find that the shock mount bushings are to weak for the bilsteins so I order spl for the compression rod and shock mount and see what happens......also it seems as if my front cross bar is damaged just a tad it's got a slight tweak to it, to where the passenger side bolts are not centered directly like the driver side off by just a hair looking into getting another one just to make sure. The compression rod on that side had more stress on it than the driver be fore it was torqued down. The compression rods were identical to the ones taken off but those were aftermarket too as Mia Wallace has 216,000 miles on her

she still looks good just continuous battle trying to get her to feel good again.

Sundown72

Not sure what you mean by “cross bar”, but if the crossmember is crooked, the car probably got hit, or hit something at some point and isn’t straight. If that’s the case, no bushings are going to help, a frame shop can check if you’re out of square, and some adjustable arms may be able to get your caster back in spec.

Good luck with the repairs. Chasing this sort of problem can be tough.

Roxiz0604

The bracket that holds everything together under compression rods etc... I'm pretty sure right after I bought it the guy that was supposed to be doing some work on it drifted it over a curb as the rear control arms were bent up on passenger rear but you live and learn....... never let anyone drive your 350z especially if they don't have s*** of their own at this age.... Thanks for info!