I just crawled under my 2.5 day old RX8, and it looks like camber adjustment in the rear AND to my surprise, camber adjustment in the front.

Does anyone know how far you can adjust negative camber to via stock eccentrics?

Props to Mazda for allowing the fronts... can't wait to start playing with alignment as I learn the limits of the car more and more!

 

Yuop, the RX-8 suspension is fully adjustable - caster, camber, and toe in front, camber and toe in rear. The Miata also has a fully adjustable suspension since the beginning (1990). Mazda does sports cars right!

There have been several threads discussing alignment settings in the past - I don't recall their numbers, but a quick search should turn them up.

Regards,
Gordon

 

Yeah, I was going to do that, but I got too excited!

Board has been running slow or my dsl has been slow lately.

Good stuff, and thanks for the reply!

 

Good news, bad news on the alignment front:

1) Max camber on the front was .9 left/1.0 right (yes another camber limited mazda product).
2) Caster adjustment appears to be almost totally independent of camber so I was able to max the caster adjuster without camber changing much (less than .1 deg). The two adjustments are much more decoupled than on my '91 Miata so my suggestion is go with the caster and get the best camber you can get.
3) What this equates to is alot of dynamic camber in turns. I measured 1.9L/2.1R camber with 90 deg of steering input which is a moderate turn for regional Solo II where I run. Tire temps were about 15 deg F differential with the inside cooler during my runs.

On the rear it's not camber limited. I'm getting even temp's at 1.8 deg neg with 3/16" toe but the handling pretty much sucks with static push vs. dynamic oversteer with the stock tires (very soft sidewall in my opinion).

I'm not going any further with the stock tire since I've got my Kumho's (265/35/18) broke in and heat cycled. Prelimary indications are no rubbing but I didn't really get on it during the heat cycle drive.

If I were going run the stock tires again would recommend max camber and caster on front and 1.4 deg camber on rear with 1/4" rear toe in for Solo II. The car will probably need a bigger front sway with the stock shocks in order to get the rear toe to something that's reasonable for street use, but I'm going the shock route instead.

In summary, the car is well planted and rewards smoothness with speed. It's very forgiving to overdriving but your time will suffer greatly in comparision to a miata because it's a slower responding and heavier car, therefore takes longer to recover.

All in all I think it's competitive. Second gear is awesome with good torque available from 25-69mph (indicated). Can it run with an S2k at the national level? Don't know, but it's definitely not the D stock car some are predicting.