You lowered it, right? Maybe your suspension angles are screwy, ie your upper control arms are sloping upwards at static ride height, and on compression, slope even further causing camber to go more negative. At stock ride height, the upper and lower should sit roughly level with the ground. As you lower it, both arms start sloping upward but the top arm, being shorter, slopes more. This causes the top of the spindle to pull in towards the car and thus you're getting neg camber.
You should forget about getting the wheels aligned at that place. It's obvious that it's not achieving what the car really needs. look at it this way... If you're hungry, you eat. If your pot plant looks a bit sad, water it. If your tyres are showing wear on the inside, forget what the factory settings should be, just give them less neg camber. Every car is different, every driver has differing needs. I like lots of caster, a bit of camber but not much, and a wee bit of toe-in. If you run out of adjustment on the lower arm, shim out the top arm.
If your wheel aligner doesn't know what to do about that, maybe it's time to find another, let him play with other strut front wheel drives and charge 50 bucks to do a 5 min toe-in/out adjustment, or do it your bloody self... What do you have to lose? Another set of tyres?
What tyres are you running by the way? If they're low profiles, they definitely need less camber. This is the whole point of low-profile tyres. The stock, 14-in 195/65s have tall sidewalls that flex when cornering, tipping the tread over and running on one side of it. To counter this, a bit of neg camber is dialled in to keep more of the tread on the road on cornering. Go upgrading to 17s or something and there is nowhere near as much sidewall flex, so there's less to compensate for with camber.
Again, i stress that you just need to read what the car wants, and the tread wear is the best indication. Screw the manual, these cars don't come from the factory lowered 2-1/2 inches.
you can't tell if hydraulic lifters are good or bad by looking at them, you should have replaced them, the ends might look fine, but what about the internals of the lifters, they could be jam packed with burnt oil, near carbon and won't compress under load like they should, the centres of the lifters need to be able to compress. They could be running like solid lifters, this will bend push rods. I still reckon it is lifters
you can't tell if hydraulic lifters are good or bad by looking at them, you should have replaced them, the ends might look fine, but what about the internals of the lifters, they could be jam packed with burnt oil, near carbon and won't compress under load like they should, the centres of the lifters need to be able to compress. They could be running like solid lifters, this will bend push rods. I still reckon it is lifters
Trevor got a reaction from revhead in Painting of racecar