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I decided to do my alignment myself, probably in the next week. I’ve got some string and aluminum plates for the toe and my friend has a uber accurate digital level he will hopefully let me borrow for the camber.
I was planning on 0 deg toe all around, -2.5 rear camber and maybe the same up front.
What hot setup? Wet and dry if anyone bother to change it?
Might want some more neg camber up front. Use thin sheets of wood or something to ensure your working surface is flat. Put some weight in the driver’s seat.
I believe toe out is best for turn in and I’m not to worried about stability. I didn’t think about weighing the car first. It probably won’t get weighed until I get the logbook inspection. I’ll have to recheck it after.
Didn’t need to think about just needed to find a reference so you know I’m not making it up. I have the turbo car set up with toe out in the front for better turn in for autox, and drive it like that on the street. That car does have power steering but I doubt that makes too much of a difference.
“Toe-in causes stability and initial understeer in a turn. Toe-out causes instability and initial oversteer”.
How to Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn pg 75
Stability or turn in you can’t have both.
turbo329is wrote:
[quote]Didn’t need to think about just needed to find a reference so you know I’m not making it up. I have the turbo car set up with toe out in the front for better turn in for autox, and drive it like that on the street. That car does have power steering but I doubt that makes too much of a difference.
“Toe-in causes stability and initial understeer in a turn. Toe-out causes instability and initial oversteer”.
How to Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn pg 75
Stability or turn in you can’t have both.[/quote]
Toe in will help the car change directions faster !! You can adjust for oversteer or understeer from there. So you get better turn in and stability!! Think about what toe actually adjusts.
87isMan wrote:
[quote]turbo329is wrote:
[quote]Didn’t need to think about just needed to find a reference so you know I’m not making it up. I have the turbo car set up with toe out in the front for better turn in for autox, and drive it like that on the street. That car does have power steering but I doubt that makes too much of a difference.
“Toe-in causes stability and initial understeer in a turn. Toe-out causes instability and initial oversteer”.
How to Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn pg 75
Stability or turn in you can’t have both.[/quote]
Toe in will help the car change directions faster !! You can adjust for oversteer or understeer from there. So you get better turn in and stability!! Think about what toe actually adjusts.[/quote]
I love ya man, but I’m with turbo. I have the same book.
Ranger wrote:
+1. In my experience, toe out helps with inital turn in. I try to make the car work with 0 toe because any other toe setting scrubs speed and heats the tires, usually exascerbating any ill front axle handling. Zero toe and a little trail braking FTW.
Whats the normal front to rear weight distribution? I don’t think you need much more camber in front unless you have a front heavy car.
i read the book, too. And I tried the toe-in which caused a push-to-wheel hop, skiddish condition.
Toe out in the front at 1/8" total, 3.5 camber
Toe 0 in back with 2.0 camber.
Now, talk to Skeen, Johan, Cobetto, etc., to find out what someone with talent does for their settings.
RP
Turbo,
Try Patton’s suggestion! He aint no dummy and certainly doesn’t lack talent (although he constantly implies he does). Devinney has a point about scrubbing speed with too much toe, either in or out, but 1/8" total and maximum won’t cause a problem. The precision of your toe plates is likely greater than 1/8" any way… You are wasting your time if you aren’t making the adjustments at race weight, especially with respect to camber. Lime is about $3 per 40lb bag at Tractor Supply. You can simulate driver weight with the lime and then throw it on your yard this spring.
I can not get any more then about 2.4 degrees negative camber up front w/o the upper spring hats hitting the inside of the shock tower. What are some options for getting more.
I am running latest design of Ground Control camber plates.
Ranger wrote:
I love ya man, but I’m with turbo. I have the same book.[/quote]
Yeah I’m wrong! I just checked my folder and I’m pretty much running the patton specs
Too much toe-in will give you a “shopping cart” effect going down the straightaway.
What that means is that the car will be very twitchy at higher speeds and will feel like your front wheels are basically slopping around, like the front wheels of a shopping cart. Too much toe-out will scrub some speed yet be more stable. When I used to run circle track, my crew chief sent me out in testing trying both ways and asked me what I liked better, of course I liked the stable feel but couldn’t afford to give up any time so we settled on 1/16 out. For my road course stuff I prefer 0 toe-in/toe-out.
Just my .02 
Step one of the alignment is done, which is finally replacing the original tie-rod ends with new ones I’ve had sitting in boxes since May. I don’t think I had a torch and pipe wrenches the first time I tried.
just curious…
On my e36 M3 I had 1/8 total toe out in the front and 1/8 total toe in in the rear. 2 1/2 neg rear, 3 1/2 neg front on JRZ’s.
The front turned in better and was stable in the straights. The rear was more stable in hard breaking, didn’t wander. This was a great setup for the e36, would the e30’s be simular?
For starters im new and this is my first post/reply…
I understand all the alignment specs, and agree 1/16 toe out in front, 0 toe rear. And for camber I would assume you want as much negative up front as possible? Anyone have a solution to mahoneyj’s issue with contact to the strut tower? What about rear, too much negative camber will cause what type of condition, understeer maybe?
Now as far as the actual alignment procedure, can anyone give a little more detailed reply on how its done. I am a tech and all the alignments I do are on a Hunter laser alignment rack and it makes it quite easy. So when I attempt to do my track car how can I make the adjustments accurate?