Does anyone have any experience with front and rear control arms a 2006 s40 2.4i fwd.

I have the front control arms in, but the rear control arms are being held up by a canada post strike. I understand the need for a wheel alignment when i change the fron control arms but do i need one with rear control arm change?

 

I'd recommend doing a four-wheel alignment after changing the rear control arms - I don't think they're likely to change the toe-in too much, but it could be enough to cause a problem. The camber isn't really adjustable (unless you buy adjustable upper control arms, which I did on my Acura to correct an out-of-spec camber, but didn't on my V50 because my camber was pretty close to in-spec with the old control arms, and will no doubt be better with the new ones).

I guess it comes down to two things - how far will you be driving the car before getting those rear CAs in, and how confident are you that you have the alignment reasonably close (particularly toe-in). There are shadetree mechanic procedures for setting toe-in, using a taut string at a measured distance from the hubs (wheel centercaps, usually) and then measuring the distance to the rim face front and rear. With that, you should be able to dial in the toe-in close enough that you won't be scrubbing your tires off by driving the car for a week or two, nor will the handling be affected in any real way. When I recently swapped my LCAs, struts and axles, I did an "eyeball alignment", basically using a long level and getting a feel for how parallel it was to the rocker panels when laid across the front tire. The car was out of spec but not horribly so (one side was 0.1° out and the other 0.4° out). Plenty good for a short-term alignment (though I did get mine done the day after).

 

Thanks for that information. The volvo dealer is 100kms from me but the ford dealership is on 13km. So I'll change it all and then drive it to the ford dealership since my car is technically a ford focus. The already said they can do it..

 

most shops use standard computerized alignment systems which can just program in the specs for pretty much any make and model. The only difference I've ever found with a dealer vs an indy shop is that the dealer tends to be more diligent than say a local tire store selling a $49 "special". You can call around to your local shops to see what equipment they use (ie an Atlas or Hunter system)...

Here's some good reading: https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiret...e.jsp?techid=4