Hello all,

I changed out my tires today to Advan's and got a full alignment. Please take in mind i do not know anything about alignments, even after reading i'm still blur. After searching the forums i found these settings:

Front
Camber -1.2 Left -1.2 Right
Caster 6.9 Left 6.9 Right
Toe 0.00 Left 0.00 Right
Rear
Camber -1.3 Left -1.3 Right
Toe 0.3 Left 0.3 Right

I went to a very well known guy here in my country and he told me that this would not be ideal... I trusted him and he adjusted it for me...

Here are the specs from the sheet


Front

Caster
Before 6.52L 6.04R
After 6.77L 5.69R

Camber
Before -0.77L -0.11R
After -0.74L -0.46R

Toe
Before -0.02L -0.12R
After 0.12L 0.12R

Total Toe
Before -0.14
After 0.24

King-Pin
Before 11.08L 9.71R
After 11.12L 9.97R

SAI
Before 10.31L 9.60R
After 10.43L 9.48R

Set Back
Before -0.19
After -0.19

Rear

Toe
Before 0.00L -0.16R
After 0.13L 0.15R

Camber
Before -1.38L -0.98R
After -1.05L -1.08R

Total Toe
Before -0.16
After 0.27

Thrust
Before 0.08
After -0.01

Set Back
Before 0.19
After 0.22


He said he was compensating for driver and road angle... I'm not really sure what he was talking about. Take in mind this is a Right hand drive country

Can u guys give some input on whether he knows what he is doing or shud i never go to his place again

 

Why not just email Mazda or call a Mazda dealer and ask them whats the stock set up Vs what you got there.

 

Excellent recommendation for a street driven car that will be driven in a spirited way. Achievable without changing parts. My "after" numbers were exactly as above except that I only asked for -1.0 on the front camber. All numbers were dead on WITH NO MORE THAN 0.01 degree variation on all settings! Performance alignment, done right.

He would need to know your driving habits and interests before deciding what is ideal.

WOW. Sloppy.

Really sloppy

Ideal for straight line highway stability. SUCKS for handling.

Again, great for straight line stability, SUCKS for handling.

I have never heard of adjusting for road angle. Most roads are crowned (higher in center line than at shoulders) to allow for rain runoff, but unless you know you will always be on the same side of the roadway, you shouldn't set your alignment up for it. One-way streets, expressways, and THE TRACK are three examples of places where you will not necessarily be bound to one side of the crown or the other.

As for driver weight, the only way to compensate for it is to do the alignment with you in the car, or a similar amount of weight placed in the driver's seat. Just fudging the numbers is grossly inaccurate since you would have to estimate the amount of suspension travel for the driver's weight, and associated camber/caster/toe curves. I doubt ANY alignment specialist would claim to be able to do this. Besides, look at YOUR numbers. If he assumes your weight on the right side of the car would increase negative camber (proper assumption, but no way to know how much), why is the rear camber more negative?

Basically, you got an alignment that would make 95% of people happy. That is, you can get on a straight piece of road and cruise along with your hands in your lap and the car will never pull to one side or the other. I'll bet you could do that before, too. You did NOT get a performance alignment which is what the numbers you asked for would have been. It looks like he adjusted your toe and then called it a day.

Either he didn't recognize/realize that you were asking for a performance alignment, or he is not willing to spend the time to do that and get it right. Either way, I would recommend that you find a new alignment guy.

 

I'm gonna have a chat with him first thing monday...

 

Your alignment guy sucks...

The specs you mentioned are about right

max out front camber and caster, 0 toe
max out rear camber and toe in a bit

 

Tell me which shop this is so I can avoid it. There is no ideal setup for any car, he would have to know your driving style and take road condition into consideration and come up with a compromise between safety and handling.

You generally start with factory default setting, make a change only to one of the above, drive it at the limit of your tires and know how you want the handling to be changed. If you don't know what you wanted changed after you drive then I suggest you just stick to factory setting.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Front toe out would make the car quite loose. Rear toe in would make the car track straight nicely. If you have lots of castor, you don't need too much negative camber in the front.

 

do you just drive it normally?
or do you race or track your car?

 

That would be a spiritual drive at most, there's no track in our country. Even the freeway is shitty.