Alignment can make a big difference in how your car handles. I have played with mine quite a bit and now I have it right where I want it. The handling is GREAT, so I want to share with you guys.

My driving is a mix of highway and aggressive street, with indulgences in curvy 2-lane roads whenever I have the chance, and frequent 1/4 mile passes. I am going to try autocrossing this car for the first time on Sunday and I am really looking forward to it.

With the alignment set as it is now, the car is very stable in corners, and the turn-in is more responsive. The cornering is quite close to neutral, but understeer biased. A little throttle will rotate the car more and neutralize the handling, and a little more will allow the tail to slip a few degrees, but without coming way far out. Straight-line launches are fantastic. I leave the line at WOT and zero wheelspin on my drag radials on the way to a 1.8 60'.

I was initially doing my own adjustments with a camber/caster gauge and homemade toe plates. I gave up on that because I could not get as repeatable measurements as with a real alignment machine.

FRONT
REARRunning less toe-in than the factory setting in the front helps the car turn-in and feels more responsive. Front toe-out will eat front tires.

Less rear toe-in helps the rear end rotate, removes understeer, and is very noticeable. I took a test drive with rear toe-OUT and it was wild! The car would turn VERY responsively, but did not want to go straight. Not safe. At 0.0 degrees rear toe the car handled well, but the rear end would squirm around under WOT launches. It feels much more stable with just a little rear toe-in.

I think less camber in the rear also helps neutralize the cornering, but the primary reason I wanted it is for drag racing launches. My settings are a compromise between cornering and straightline launches. With this alignment and my current diff/wheels/tires combo, I have more traction than power. I leave the line at WOT with no wheelspin on a good track.

Note: my track setup is:

• Wavetrac differential
• 16" rims
• 255/50/16 Mickey Thompson ET Street Radials at 16 psi.
• custom rear alignment

I hope this information helps someone! Your results may vary, don't try this at home, not responsible for...anything, etc.

 

I am glad you found a set up that works for you. I am curious why he couldn't get the rear camber exactly where you wanted with those style adj camber arms?

James

 

How repeatable are these tests?

 

I may have missed it but are lowered at all? Great information!

 

The adjustments are only so precise. The readings on the screen would vary 0.1 degrees without touching it. Furthermore, adjusting one item, affects the others.

My car is not lowered. Stock springs and shocks.

The autocross yesterday was a blast!

I learned several things. One: The outdated 280-treadwear Continental Contisportcontact 2 front tires I have could not compete with the 140 treadwear tires the rest of the STR class was running, and were ultimately, I think, a limiting factor. What I would do is fly into a corner, push the front tires past their limit and they would push wide, at the apex I would use the throttle to rotate the rear of the car around and get lined up exiting the corner. I drifted out of more corners than not, which was QUITE fun, but probably not the fastest way around the course. By the way: you CAN steer the car with the throttle, and it is awesome. I have 200 treadwear Dunlop Star Specs on the rear and they felt better suited for the task.

I was very pleased with the driveabillity of the car. I could push it around between understeer, slight oversteer, and wild oversteer without it doing anything unexpected. I could power out of a corner holding just a few degrees of oversteer without it acting like it wanted to swap ends, which was great. I never hit a single cone, at least not hard enough to knock it over. I may have kissed a few. I never spun either. I came close once - I went into a downhill 90* corner way too fast, and was pushing through it and headed to hit the outside cones on the exit. I punched the gas to rotate the car - which did the trick - and just missed the cones, with the back bumper, instead of the front fender. I got all kinds of sideways, but didn't want to bail so I kept working the gas and seesawed left-right-left. Amazingly I got around the next corner(a gentle left kink), sideways, and got it under control just in time for corner # 3 in this sequence (another tight right-hander), without hitting any cones anywhere!

The only place the car was loose was on the slalom. They had a long slalom that you entered slowly and had to build your speed in the slalom. If I got going to fast by the end I would be pitching the car back and forth and the rear would get loose. It felt like I would throw it to one side, counter-steer to catch it, and throw it to the other side. If I kept the speed lower, the slalom was perfect.

I talked alignments with the Honda S2000 guys which comprised the majority of my class. I could not compete with their times. But they were all seasoned regulars and their cars were prepped specifically for the class. They run crazy alignment specs: -3 degrees of camber all around, and a good bit of front toe OUT. That would shred the inside edge of your tires going down the highway.

Those S2000 engines are so weak though. They were dropping the clutch at 6000 RPMs to get a good launch and not bog. I told them that I was spinning the launch no matter how lightly I touched the throttle (horrible surface). One of them said to me: "You probably need to lower your RPMs. What RPM are you launching at?" I said "1200" and he looked at me like I had three eyes.

Overall I had a great time and was happy with the alignment. For my mixed use, I am going to leave it right where it is at.

 

Thank you for the write up. I am having some suspension/handling issues and this helps!

 

boostmonkey,
How has your tire wear been since aligning to these specs? I had mine aligned to this yesterday and the tech said it would be great for launches but was very concerned it would eat up the tires driving around town.

 

It is better actually. Before, my rear tires wore notably faster on the inside edge. Now they seem to wear more evenly with the reduced negative camber.

Reducing toe-in almost always reduces tire wear. Tires that are toed in or out are basically scraping down the road.

 

Toe with wear out a tire faster than camber.

Amazing how many alignment tech no nothing about what does what in an alignment. All they know is get it in the green.

 

My front camber is out. I'll have to get the bolts from NW to get it right. On my rear toe I asked for .05 on each side (.10 total). The reading actually came out -.05 each side. Should I be concerned it is in the negative or just leave it since it is so close to zero?


Before when I lauched hard the rear end would slide way out to the left. Now it slides out slightly to the right and then straightens up.

 

ANY toe out, especially on the rear can cause squirrelly handling.

If you are ok with it, the tire wear will not be much of an issue, but that .05 as toe in instead of toe out will help your stability A LOT!!!

 

The crown of the road can affect this too. It might slide slightly to the left in the other lane.

If negative indicates toe-out on their report, I would have the alignment adjusted.

 

Thanks. I'll get it re-adjusted with .1 total toe in.

 

I think you will be very happy with that. The rear will stay more planted than it does now, but you will be near the minimum toe-in facotry spec, which will help turn-in.

 

Question for you. I just had some new tires put on today and they did a free alignment check. Here are the results:

Front
Left/Right
Camber -1.3/-1.2
Caster 4.8/4.8
Toe -0.13/0.07

Rear
Left/Right
Camber -1.7/-1.4
Toe 0.05/0.13

The printout that I got from them has the front toe bad in both wheels, and in the rear, only the camber of the right wheel is good. He made it seem like a big deal that they were that far off. My concern is that I don't feel any pull in the wheel, and it seems like I go straight down the road. I'm about to take a 500 mile round trip down to San Diego for a Super Bowl party with some friends and want to know if I should get it adjusted before I make the trip. If I should, would your suggested numbers work best for daily driving? I had really cheap tires put on, so want to get as much wear out of them as possible.

 

So odd question by me I know but are you running str in a srt6 crossfire?

 

That toe out on the left front would be my biggest concern.

 

Yes, the alignment specs I recommended should also yield you excellent tire wear.

Your alignment is off enough that I would recommend having it aligned. Over the life of the tires, 500 miles isn't that big of a deal, so you could do it before or after.

 

Thanks for the reply. I guess I'll go ahead and have it done now then since I'm working on the car these past few weeks. Want to get everything locked down so I don't have to do anything for a few k more miles.