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The bolts appear to be moving, enlarging the holes they go through. Uh oh. Only on the driver side.
Googling for information has been exceptionally difficult as the keywords bring up all sorts of related issues. I've seen dozens of pinch bolt threads lol.
I presume this isn't good. I am planning a shock + camber plate upgrade for the front soon - should I be accelerating those plans?
Those holes are pre-formed like that. While it does look like they moved, there is a little bit of "slop" in those holes to allow for minor camber adjustment. (the max camber adjustment on those slots is about ±0.5°)
Get the car firmly on the ground. loosen those nuts, then re-torque them. Should be fine after that.
Got it - I was unclear if it was normal or some mod someone did or some deforming which had happened. I did have the car aligned last with the instructions "I want the most aggressive profile possible, I don't care about tire wear".
It’s common to loosen those bolts, pull the plastic alignment pin, and push them in as far as they will go. Should get you slightly over -1.0° negative camber on each side. Really, that’s not enough to cause undue wear, and it gets you ever-so-slightly better handling. If you can get -2.0° negative on each side, you’ll be about what the GP2 came with. Dial the toe in correctly, and you’ll have a great handling car with minimal tire wear. Match the rear to the front, and you’ll have a great handling car.
If you are concerned about wear and hole stretching, you could always get a strut brace. Even a cheap one would help reinforce the mounting area on each side.
I bought an ebay flat strut brace but it wouldnt fit because of my intake, I kept the mounting plates for this very reason....the potholes in my area can be pretty bad.
The R53 had issues with the strut towers mushrooming and you could get stiffening plates for them. That was fixed in the R56, and from everything I've heard the R56 cars also don't significantly benefit from a strut tower brace for stiffness.
As long as those nuts are torqued to spec OP should be fine. As Nik noted it looks like they just moved the strut tops inwards in the adjustment slots to maximize camber.
