Daily driver 70miles each way for me....when I get to the track, I lower the car 1" and it throws the front to a -1.5ish up front-rears stay the same

 

so basically there is no way to make sure you have a good sound alignment unless you do it yourself? I dont have the know how or tools to do a alignment.

 

We are working on installing Megan Racing coil overs on my car right now. This is one of their first sets so will post with the results and install pics later today

 

Not the way i would do it, but cool if it works for you. Changing ride height has a big impact on toe, so keep that in mind.

Any competent shop can do a good alignment. You shouldn't attempt it yourself. Ask in your local forum for a good shop that knows at least a little about suspension.

- Andrew

 

Actually, it's not that hard to do your own alignment. In fact if you're a autoxer/racer on a budget, you really need to know how to do it yourself. I picked up a digital camber gage and can get pretty accurate results. I measured the stock rear camber at -1.6 and the front I maxed it out to -1.7. That will do for now but it's still not enough.

Toe is actually not that bad either. Toe plates are a quick and dirty way to measure and adjust it.

 

I'm pretty **** about alignment but I've played around a heckuvalot with different settimgs and would like to throw a couple of things out there:

1. Alignment can have a huuuge impact on the handling of your car and it's pretty cheap to do (not to mention cheap to undo) so why not exploit it?

2. Find a shop with a laser alignment machine and become good buddies with them.

3. Remember that your ride height setting affects alignment and also that changing one aspect of your alignment will impact others i.e. changing your camber will also change your toe, so you have to adjust both at the same time to keep things consistent.

***

CB's generic settings are a good place to start (very close to where I ran my car for ages before I started tinkering and I was verry happy with the setup);

max neg camber front (roughly -1.6 to -1.8 on stock evos using the eccentric bolts)
max neg camber rear (roughly -1.8 respectively on stock evos)
-0.05 toe out front
0 toe rear


I'd recommend zeroing the toe all around for a high mileage daily driver to preserve tires a bit - to control understeer you can loosen the rear a bit relative to the front by decreasing the negative camber i.e.;

max negative camber front (about -1.8)
-1.2 negative camber rear
0 toe front
0 toe rear

For stock class AutoX, I used to run something a little more aggressive (wanted to increase turn in responsiveness and promote lift off oversteer):

max neg camber front (-1.8)
-1.5 camber rear
-0.05 degrees toe out front
-0.05 degrees toe out rear

When running super sticky R compound rubber for AutoX (full slicks actually), I've had alot of fun running the following ninja-aggressive setup (can only be acheived with camber plates). It made the car turn in like a monster and rotate like a ninja albeit a little twitchy at the rear under hard acceleration (for better and for worse);

-3.2 camber front
-1.8 camber rear
-0.05 toe out front
-0.1 toe out rear


For circuit driving on both street tires and R compunds I'm currently pretty happy with the following setup. It's backed off a bit from the more aggressive autoX setup due to the need for more control and I also found that reducing the negative camber up front actually helped front traction throughout the entire corner - hard to get a sweet spot where the front turn in like a magnet without trying to push wide once you get on the throttle.

So this is what I currently run on the circuit - a setup I'm pretty happy with for the moment;

-2.4 degrees camber front
-1.7 degrees camber rear
-0.05 toe out front
-0.05 toe out rear

Of coure I should mention that these settings are what works for my setup - coilovers (KW V3 non-Robispec), whiteline roll centre kit, steering precision kit, bump steer kit etc. + whiteline HD rear swaybar set at full stiff + stock front swaybar.

So, a few general theories (please someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - I'm only a tinkerer!)

1. Seems that increasing negative camber works well when you're experiencing sudden, high lateral G loads (i.e. AutoX or tight circuits). As G loads get more progressive and less violent, or as cornering speeds go up, I've found that too much camber just makes you lose grip past a certain point so it's important to try and find that sweet spot. If you've got too much camber up front, you'll start to understeer more and more under hard power after clipping the apex of a given corner. ***note*** not on the stock suspension - best to just max out front camber if you're not running camber pates.

2. This may be a matter of personal preference but I've noticed that my car seems to "like" it when I have two thirds to three quarters the amount of rear camber as I have at the front i.e. -2 neg camber front seems to work good with-1.2 to -1.5 rear camber. Generally speaking, more camber up front that at the rear. I like to kick the rear out a bit by lifting the throttle though so maybe that's just me.

3. A little toe out = wilder, livelier, twitcher; a little toe in = more stable, more grip. So generally you should toe out the end you want to make twitchy and toe in the end of the car you want to control more. But if you exceed a certain threshold of toe you'll just get understeer and worn out tires.

4. Only change one thing at a time, try it for a week, then change it BACK and try it for another week. When you like it after two weeks, keep it and try something else etc. Only then will you really get a sense as to whether something's really helping out. The mind can lie - easy to convince yourself that the car's better than before each time you leave the alignment shop even if that isn't actually the case.

5. Aggressive alignments will cost you tires. Lots of them! I think I went through at least 3 sets of R compunds last year (although I do admit to using them as my daily tire as well as for AutoX and trackdays a couple of times each month)

6. Do your own research. By all means try out some guy's alignment settingf from the net - you can always switch it back if you don't like it at minimal cost. But no one setup off the net is the magic bullet - that all depends on your preferences, setup and application.

7. Don't listen to me, let's hope others chime in!!! Unfortunately alot of the best tuners out there have alot of time and energy invested into their own setups and aren't so wiling to share the whole shebang though it seems - which is pretty understandable.

So until someone like Robi somes online and spills his guts I'm just chucking out what little I "know" in order to help out, or more likely in teh hope that it will irritate somebody who knows better enough that they'll come out of the woodwork and add more information to the "pool".

We're all on the same side after all - Evos vs. the world