The Nissan Path

HI,
I recently needed to add new shocks/struts to my Pathy at 48k. There is no lift on this, and the shocks/struts are Bilstein 4600 HD for stock height. I've owned the Pathy since it was new, and haven't had any impacts that would have affected the front end (alignment was good prior). also, the part numbers on the struts match the part numbers on the Bilstein website for a stock height Pathy.

The issue is that the new struts seem to have raised the front end a bit and the camber is maxed out after the new alignment, more on one side than the other. Though over the last couple of thousand miles the front height has come down a little, my question is why couldn't the front end be aligned? Is it normal for a Bilstein strut on these vehicles to have such a dramatic change in height? Will it continue to reduce over the next few miles? Could the intial height change be the reason the shop couldn't pull in the camber when they were first installed? Should I have the the alignment looked at again if the struts need some 'settling time'?

If I park my Pathy next to another in a parking lot, the height difference is quite obvious. The shop noted that I needed new 'camber eccentric bolt parts' to correct the alignment issue. Has anyone expericanced this before?

I know that's a lot of description, but thanks for the help!!!

only thing i would say is if your old struts were severly worn out, then maybe the ride height was a little lower than the brand new 4600's.

however, i don't see why they couldn't get camber back in line. i mean i have an '08 with the adj. 5100's up front with +1.5in and they (NTB) were able to do mine just fine.

maybe try another shop?

Shocks and struts shouldn't affect ride height; that is determined by the spring. The purpose of the shocks/struts is to dampen impacts and and help control the up and down movement of the suspension. The only way struts or shocks can affect the ride height is if the wrong ones were installed or there is an issue with the piston jamming, assuming they were installed properly. Eccentric bolts can help issues where the camber cannot be set using the factory bolts, but I would first be concerned over the ride height issue.

thanks for the feedback!

yeah, i was suprised to see the height change. my 'fake lift' came down over the first 1k to 2k miles and the vehicle is level again. i want to ask the guys that did the alignmnent to see if being a couple inches lower in the front now will allow it to come in.

i crawled under to look at the stickers on the strut and checked it against both the bilstein website and 4x4parts.com. seems to be the correct strut.

perhaps you can help me with understanding how they could have done something wrong. I'm a bit old school when it comes to suspensions (did cars from the 60s). but even with that, struts really shouldn't be that complicated to install (just a pain to do at home in the garage ). If i know some more, maybe i can ping them on something a little deeper.

They are pretty simple if you know what you are doing, but I've seen all sorts of things in my years of working with Nissan and I can't comment on a job if I wasn't there when it was done. Hopefully they still have the old parts in case they need to do some measurements to try and figure out what's going on.