Do You Need a Wheel Alignment After Installing or Adjusting Coilovers?

If you are installing a new coilover kit or want to adjust your current coilovers to a new ride height, you may be wondering if you need to get a wheel alignment afterwards.

Yes, when installing or adjusting coilovers by significant amounts, you do need to get a wheel alignment as the suspension will be significantly affected. If you are only adjusting the coilovers by a small amount (10mm / ½ inch or so), you don’t have to get an alignment, but it still wouldn’t hurt.

Let’s go into detail to explain why.

What Exactly Are Wheel Alignments And What Do They Do?

A wheel alignment is a process of putting the car on an alignment machine and measuring how the wheels sit in relation to a centered line. Basically, this tells you if the wheels on your car are sitting straight (or how you want them to sit), and allows the person doing the alignment to make accurate changes to get them to sit in the desired position.

Most wheel alignments only involve adjusting the toe of the tires, usually on the front. However, if your car has the ability to make further adjustments (some of the best coilover kits also give you this option) then it could also involve adjusting the camber and caster. The coilovers that can adjust camber will have camber plates on the strut mounts like this:

Here’s a couple of quick diagrams to explain what toe, camber and caster are:

Toe

Camber

Caster

Why Do You Need to Get a Wheel Alignment?

If you make changes to the suspension geometry which affects the camber, caster or toe, you need to get a wheel alignment so that the wheels are put back to the desired position.

If the wheels are in an incorrect position, not only will the tyres wear out faster but the handling of the car will also be affected, and you may find you have less grip either in a straight line, during turns or both.

If your vehicle and suspension setup allow it, you can also fine tune the handling of the car by adjusting the camber, toe and caster. This will allow you to either increase straight line stability, steering response or turning grip, depending on the set up. However, all that is quite advanced so unless you really know what you are doing, I wouldn’t recommended touching it.

Why You Need to Get a Wheel Alignment After Installing Coilovers

When you install coilovers, you are undoing parts of the suspension and changing the position that they sit when you install the new parts. Not only that, the new coilovers are almost certainly going to sit at a different height to the previous suspension, which also changes how you wheels sit in relation to the road.

Due to these factors, you need to get a wheel alignment when you replace any component of the suspension, and that includes installing new coilovers.

Even if you are removing your current suspension and putting the same suspension back in, you’ll never bolt everything back up in 100% exactly the same place, which is why you’ll need to get the wheels aligned.

When you take the car for a drive after working on the suspension, you will notice how the steering wheel doesn’t sit straight, or the car pulls in one direction. This tells you that the suspension is off and you need to get an alignment.

However, even if you don’t notice any of this happening, the suspension could still be off (camber for example, won’t generally be felt at the steering wheel) so it’s highly recommended that you get the alignment done before you chew through your tires.

Why You Need to Get a Wheel Alignment After Adjusting the Coilovers

If you have adjusted the height at which the coilovers sit, you will generally need to get an alignment as well. The reason why is because as the car moves up and down in relation to the wheels, the camber and toe move together in one direction or the other. If you change the height of the suspension, you will change the base toe and camber settings, so your tires will sit differently on the road.

Now, if you only made a small height adjustment, such as 5-10mm (1/4 – ½ inch) then you’ll generally be fine not getting an alignment as such as small change won’t make a huge difference to the rest of the suspension geometry. However, any more than that and you should go and get an alignment done.

If your coilovers allow you to adjust camber (usually at the strut mounts) it’s a good idea to do that while at the alignment to make sure that the settings are perfectly even on both sides. You don’t want one side of the car sitting with more camber than the other.

Do You Need An Alignment After Adjusting Dampening?

So coilover models allow you to adjust the dampening settings, usually by either turning a knob or inserting an Allen key into the top of the shock and turning it. When adjusting the dampening settings, you do not need to get an alignment done.

The reason why is because the dampening hasn’t changed anything in the suspension geometry, it simply affects how the suspension will react over a bump. Therefore, because nothing has been changed, you don’t need to get an alignment, and can change the dampening settings all you want.

How Soon After Installing Or Adjusting Coilovers Should You Get An Alignment?

If you have just installed new coilovers, you’ll want to give them some time to “settle” before going for an alignment. This is because new suspension takes some time to wear in, which means it will drop in ride height a little bit. If you get an alignment straight away, you may find that it is out again after not too long.

Because of this, it is advisable to wait a few days to about a week before going to get the alignment done. Make sure to drive the car around for a bit during these few days to the let suspension do its thing. You’ll notice it drop a little bit (usually about 5-10mm or ¼-1/2 inch). This would be a good time to make any adjustments if you wish, then go in for the alignment.

If you are adjusting coilovers that have already been on your car for some time, you can go in and get the alignment done right away, because they won’t need to do any “settling”.

Where to Get the Wheel Alignment Done

Most tyre shops and many auto repair shops will be able to do the alignment for you. However, it is advisable to find a shop that knows a little more about performance cars and coilover suspension so they can make the correct adjustments.

The average mechanic or alignment shop will usually only adjust the toe and not bother to check camber or caster, and many shops don’t even bother doing the rear wheels at all. Therefore, ask around or check your local forums or groups to find a shop that knows what they are doing.

How Much Do Wheel Alignments Cost?

Generally speaking a good alignment shop will charge between $80 and $150 to do an alignment. Be wary of cheap alignments under this range, because they are unlikely to do a good job unless it’s your buddy. Also make sure that they are going to align all four wheels, not just the front two.

Keep in mind that while this may seem a bit expensive and nobody likes to pay for it, it’s much cheaper than buying a new set of tyres because you wore through your old tyres twice as fast due to a bad wheel alignment.

Conclusion

When making any changes to your suspension which will affect the geometry, it is a good idea to get an alignment. This includes installing new suspension parts such as coilovers, and making any major ride height or camber changes. If installing new coilovers, let them settle for about a week before getting the alignment done.

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Mateja Matic

Having been in the car tuning game for 15 years, I'm now using all the knowledge I acquired to help other people learn and select the right parts for their cars through this blog.

Cars owned: Mk2 Golf with 1.8T swap, BMW E28 with M30B35 swap, BMW E36 328I Mtech, BMW 750IL, Nissan 300ZX, Honda Civic EF