i know what camber, caster, and toe are.

i know what an alignment is made up of.

i just don't know how to put it all together (you know what the pieces are you just don't know how to build the final product)

can someone suggest some good settings and explain why?

and would i just go to any auto place (sears, dealership, etc...) and just give them a paper with the settings i want?

i've heard that the stock settings are pretty sticky (explaining the rough spinouts) and this made me rethink my settings

i am going to drive this thing daily, so a kind of conservative setting would be good for tire wear. i would be doing autocross and hpde's about twice every month untill i get competitive if i get competitive. i would like some neutral handling, leaning towards over steer.

i do drift, i'm getting a lot better, i'm up onto 2nd gear drifts now

have the 40th biltsteins, will get koni yellows one day.

 

There's a sticky at the top of this forum section on alignment settings. Lots of good info in there (mixed in with the bad).

 

^Yeah what he said.

And as for where to get it aligned...well it really all depends, Some places will ONLY set it to factory specs, I called around to 5 or 6 different places, Firestone, Tire Kingdom, performance shops...etc, and they all said "only factory specs" So it really depends on where you go, best thing to do is just call and ask first.

 

sorry.

you are going to do auto x and hpde twice a month..

you should be giving us setting..

but really.. the sticky about alignment at the top of the page is more than you can handle.


beers

 

sticky is hard to find ppl setting within 9pgs of work

 

To summarize some of whats in the Sticky that would probably apply to your needs. First as said above talk (in person not over the phone) with the alignment techs until you find one who will give you an out of spec alignment. Explain that the car is doing dual duty on the racetrack (explain that its not drag racing) and street. Set the car to 0 toe front and rear. Set the front to the maximum negative camber the tech can achieve. If you're lucky you'll get -1.2 to -1.4. More likely you'll be lucky to get -1.0. Whatever you end up with up front set the rear camber to 0.2 more negative camber, i.e. if you get -1.2 front set the rear to -1.4. This will be a significant improvement over OEM spec for the track and works well on the street and you won't see any more tire wear. I think if I remember I ended up with -1.2 front and -1.6 rear and the car was pretty neutral on most corners. There is more adjustment available in the rear so the front is sort of the limiting factor in camber adjustment. If your car is already lowered you may be able to get more negative camber in the front than I mentioned above.

 

I have 0 toe, -1.0 camber in the front, -1.5 in the back. Front caster at 7.8

 

I got my front camber almost -3.0...

 

i understand camber help and that it changes the degree of your tire but how does it help and what does it do while your sliding

 

yeah i read the sticky, and thanks. i'll call around to see whats happening

wow thanks very very much for that.

and what about caster settings?

i'll just tell the tech, max neg camber, and -.2 more in the back.

thank you very very much!

and we want 0 toe for a conservative setting??

 

Basically (and I'm sure its more complicated than this) a tire gets its best adhesion under lateral forces at some particular angle to the road. The optimum angle will vary somewhat from tire to tire and different road conditions but basically its going to be either vertical (no camber) or slightly negative camber, and definitely not positive camber. A really good suspension will keep the tire/wheel close to the optimum camber as the car rolls and turns. Some suspensions are better at this than others. To help the suspesion achieve the optimum tire angle, some static camber is usually added so that when the car is hard into a turn (at dynamic camber) the tire is near that magic camber angle that the tire wants it to be.

 

and those settings, i just want them to be slightly better than stock, with less snap, or twitch. i'll be exiting my turn, with a tiny tiny bit of over steer, and get a huge snap.

 

the stock settings are kind of twitchy, and i would really like good turn in.

all in all, slight leaning more towards track than drivability compared to stock, good turn in is what i want.