First this page is hosed in my browser. https://www.thirdgen.org/suggested-front-end-alignment

There used to be a thread where someone who could read it did but I cant find that now that I need it.

Anyway I was reading a tread that said straight can be used with Del-A-Lum bushings? Cant see this working well when I cruising down the interstate at 80MPH real well.

I also read toe out is better for autox?

Anyway 100% of my front suspension is new. Koni Yellows, Weight jacks with 900 LB springs, Del-a-Lum bushings, Founders Strut mounts, Moog ball-joints, tie-rods and center link. Also new sway bay bushings. I rebuilt the steering gear and resealed the PS pump.

What do you recommend for great (performance) street driving and autoX?

I am thinking about buying my own alignment tools so I can play around with it but I want to drive the car till then.

 

I don't think the bushings make any difference to the settings.

 

If you want one setting and one setting only and it sees street use- then 3/32 toe in...period.

The cars do not suffer from setback as much as they do from cornering bushing load. Thus, bushings really make no difference in straight line toe settings.

The only reason you go toe out is for ONLY short rack tight corner low speed useage. most autox tracks never see seeds above 60-80 mph max at best- for most cars (yes there are exceptions, but very rare.) What toe out does is helps the inside tire turn a bit more than the outside tire so as to grip the car and pull it in that direction of cornering- yes your turning is done with the inside front tire, not the outside front tire. Think of it like running accross the playground and grabbing a tetherball post with one arm out stretched and yanking you around the pole abruptly. The more that inside tire turns the more it yanks the car that way. Tow out is bad for any straight line travel. Street use is 99% straight line travel.

 

I called Global West and they are extremely helpful. Great customer service! Something that seems to be lost with most aftermarket suppliers. Sure makes me want to do business with them more.

Anyway after talking with them they came up with;

Performance Street Driving:
CASTER 5.5 to 6 MAX on the passenger side. and .5 deg less on the drivers side.
CAMBER .75 - 1 deg neg
TOE IN 3/32

He said for AUTOX I can change my camber to 1.5 - 1.75 NEG.

As far as TOE OUT he said it depends on the track but not for street use because it's to "darty".

Thanks all.

 

Hmmm, I just did the same set up as rawley2 and from my searching i went with -1.5* camber, 5.5* caster and i said 1/32 toe out but their equipment does degrees so its .02* on the left and .01* on the right. I'm not sure what i think of it yet. but now i'm wondering if i should go 3/32 in too. i can't afford to pay someone to adjust it to try ten different settings.

I have two questions
1. How close is their degrees to x/32"? I've been wondering since i picked it up. i wish they would have told me there equipment was degrees instead of x/32".

2. I really want my street car to be as "track ready" as possible, thats why i went with only 1/32 out. Should i stick with this or go zero or go toe in? My car isn't a DD, just occasionally and hopefully 2 autoX per month.

The best way to explain what i'm going for is "I'm looking to take my car to the line between street car and race car without crossing over to race car." The first autoX was ruined by 6 inches of snow in may and the next one is sunday but it may be raining so i haven't got to try out the new parts.

 

The guy at Global West told me he only runs toe out on some autoX tracks. So not all of them. It totally depends on the track. Not for street driving.

He did not recommend straight at all. Said it would always be seeking a place on the road. Well something like that. In other words it would wander around.

He also said the higher camber would make it a LITTLE darty like toe out and not real good for the street.

His idea for the camber was for me to get them to set it at one setting and mark the strut mounts location and have them do it again for the other settings so I could change it when needed. With both locations marked it would be pretty simple.

 

Save this picture!

 

Unless your car is real low to the ground, I can't see getting a 6° caster setting. At least not at stock height.

-0.75 camber is great.....-1 camber should give a little more performance. But then you start wearing out the tires from continuous highway use.

3/32 total toe in = 0.09 on their machine. Try and get somewhere close to this. I like being able to drive down the highway with one hand on the wheel and it to be STABLE. So I wouldn't want to run 0 toe in. That's just asking for a constant two handed driving style to keep it in your lane.

 

Saved!!!

That was the one I was looking for I could not find.

Is that 1/32 in or zero for the toe for road racing? Never mind Reid Fleming answered as I typed this post.

The more I deal with this the more I want to buy my own alignment tools so I can test different things. Even the guy at global west pretty much said every situation calls for its own settings.

 

 

.

 

How to read an alignment chart.

http://www.justanswer.com/car/4s9s3-...-vehicles.html

I must admit that toe IN being a positive number and toe OUT being a negative number seems backwards in my head. But I don't make the rules.

 

I wish alignment shop would give us precise +0.045 and +0.045 toe in settings. But most of the time we're going to get +0.03 and +0.05 as a close enough setting. Heck, most of us are lucky if we get out of there with the steering wheel lined up right. It would be nice in the future if we could magically get perfect alignments everytime, the same way they do when they balance our tires.

Dean has seen this already. But for everybody else, it shows a very extreme example of negative camber.

 

 

I was thinking about this last night and I cant get my head around it.

Is it just something that happens with low speed, toe out?

Negative camber would put the tires in a position to make the outside tire better able to turn the car.

You watch a car doing high speed turns and you can clearly see the most weight is on the outside tire.

You can also see the inside tire come off the ground even on race cars during high speed corners.

Also NASCAR (Have not really watched since restrictor plates and profiling came into the picture) changes the outside tires more than the inside tires.

I just cant get my head around how the inside tire turns the car. Unless it only happens with a low speed toe out setup.

 

HAHA,

I work at Cooper Tires Tupelo MS plant. Although we make over 1,000,000 tires a month at that plant and it's one of the largest tire plants in the world. We make no performance tires at that plant. LOL

But I get GREAT prices on all Cooper tires and other brands they own like Mickey Thompson and a few others. And I do mean GREAT prices!!! Heck they even take them out of my check at $25 a week with no interest. LOL

In other words I'm not worried about what tires cost.

 

Its partially the quality of tire I run, and partially the sizes I run.
its getting hard to find them. I was running 285/50-18 fronts and 295/45-19 rears in Yoko Advans (now discontinued in the matching sizes I need), now I am down to the only matching good grip option of 255/55-18 fronts and 285/45-19 rears in Pirelli PZero Rosso Asymetrics- They have come down a little, they were $400 for each rear.

Its all in the name of tire qulaity for safety as well as grip- Its a 5000 lb beast I try to keep good quality rubber underneath.

 

First off, you are confusing lateral grip with turning grip. I am not saying the outside tire does nothing, but the inside tire does most of it, otherwise the outside tire struggles handling 3x the force needed to turn it as the inside tire does. The outside tire if loaded enough will do it, but a a high cost of rapid wear because it is also taking the blunt of lateral grip too.

What you need to tink about is where the vehicles center of gravity is when looking down from above at the roof of the car. You then need to think how the car is propelled with force from the rear wheels pushing on that cg. think of the car turning left and imagine taking away the LF turning grip and how the force pushing the cg from the back tires will plow the RF trying to turn. The do the opposite and remove the RF, turn the force with the LF only grip- you can see how the left front being left of the CG will pull it weasier in that direction when the force is applied from behind the cg.

When a tire comes off the ground in a racecar, the car is tight and not turning. They are reliying at that point on throttle induced steering (in a sense= drifting) or else the car is not turning. Gennerally when an inside front wheel comes off the ground the car has already apexed and is throttling off the corner straightening up its attitude.

I will give you again a few examples to easily try so you better nderstand turning dynamics.
1) This would be turn ing left with the LF tire. The sinerio I gave you where you run fast and hold out the left arm grabbing a pole as you past it. The grip of the left arm to the pole will yank your CG in that direction....(laughing) violently!

2) Now try turning your body using your right arm- How?- you need to push off something. You can try running the same speed you did next to the pole, but this time with a wall on your right that you try and push off of. Worked a little you say? but you lost that wall. So now try running at the wall at a 45* angle- You slowed your pace a bit? Yeah you did becasue you see the force it takes for your right arm to absorb and push off of the wall to get your heavy body weight motion going in the left direction. Care to try running straight at a wall and push off it to the right? Didn;t think so (I hope by now you are laughing- but you are starting to understand the ease of the inside wheel yanking the car that way.

Now lets look at toe out. Why is it inmportant for low speed tight turns? Because you turn sharper. on a sharper turn radius, the inside and outside radius tracks of the tires vary much more than they do in a higher speed turn. If you could lay down tracks that you could go back and measure, turn a corner at 1g at 30 mph, and another 1G corner at 100 mph. Go measure the track path of each wheel in 1 second time frame increment of travel.
The outside tire @ 30 mph will travel 44 feet, the inside tire will travel about 40 feet while turning a 1g left hand corner.

The outside tire @ 100 mph will travel 147 feet, the inside tire will travel 146 feet.

You see the higher the rate of speed, the mopre the path arches are equal in distance. The slower the speed the more the inside path is tighter and needs more umph in steering angle.

The toe out condition gives that little more umph in steering angle to that tighter radius inside wheel path to yank the car in that direction while the outside wheel tracks the grip path without massive slip angle of the tread to hinder lateral grip. you want the inside turning the car, and the outside gripping the lateral force. You do not want the outside front tire doing both or it will really go away fast in the case of a car poorly setup and lifting the inside front wheel.

I need to start charging for my lessons (laughing)

 

STG, thanks for the great info! Could you elaborate on toe in like you have for toe out?

<-----lol is this what your talking about?

 

Toe-in is very simple. It compensates for road drag on the front tire contact patches. This force set back a combination of tread slip angle as well as thrust on the balljoints, bushings, and tierods.

 

thank you, but could you dumb it down just a lil more so i can be sure i'm understanding you. I mean toe out got a guy swinging around a pole and running into walls.

 

STG, You should make videos with drawings or something. LOL

 

I was just as surprised to find out the information you mention. I'll try and give some examples.

1) Walk down your hallway, turn a corner towards your living room, bedroom whatever. Turn again as you walk towards your kitchen. Each time you're turning 90°. Which foot are you turning with? It's something you do every day without ever thinking about it. But your inside foot will do the turning.

2) If you've spent some time ice skating, and you're a poor ice skater. You will turn by shifting weight onto your outer foot. But you'll turn very slowly. Professional skaters like hockey players on the other hand can turn very quickly because they can turn by using their inside foot skate.

In regards to negative camber making the outside tire more able to turn the car, yes that's true. But only when the car is going straight. The camber of the car will increase on the inner tire and decrease on the outer tire (when cornering)....... You can test this by simply parking your car with the wheels turned as far as they will go. The inside tire (regardless of your alignment setting) will look like it has lots of positive camber. It's tilted outwards. The outer tire will be just the opposite. It will look like it has lots of negative camber.

The tire coming off the road on race cars is from excessive rebound settings on the suspension (probably other things as well, but that's beyond my knowledge).....Take my Koni yellow struts up front. With them in the full soft position and be driving over a dip in the road, the car will instantaneously push the front end up. Like Superman doing a push up underneath the car. If I dial the front **** firmer and I go over the same dip in the road at speed, the car will crouch down a bit before it comes back up. This is why if you crank the **** all the way up to max and then hit 3 dips in a row on the street, you have the potential to get stuck on the bump stops when that 3rd dip occurs. This won't happen with the **** set to the softer position.................So what happens on a long sweeping corner at 70 mph? With the **** set on full soft, the car leans a bit towards the outside. But what's really happening is that the inside tire/suspension is pushing the tire down towards the road very quickly as the car leans towards the outside.....But when you crank up the ****, the car goes through the corner more level/firmer feeling. The inside tire/suspension isn't pushing up as fast.

 

Ok I see now. I was not taking the castor into the turning geometry. When you turn the tires tilt also. Totally did not think about that.

ALSO

I now know why today on my test drive with my Konis all the way firm I could not make up my mind if I thought it was better or not. I was on a sort of bumpy, uneven, curvy back road and that was what it seemed to do. Never hit the bump stops but it was better on the soft setting on that road.

Thanks

 

I tried 5 different settings in 5 days driving back and forth to work (on road that I know every bump on). With the difference between full soft and full firm being 2.25 turns, I found that 1.5 turns was the most I'd ever want to run. Going above that, it seemed like I had no suspension at all and that the tires actually felt like they were swaying back and forth rather than the suspension. Even when going in a straight line, it felt unnerving. Twitchy.

I tend to stick with full soft or 1/2 turn. Occasionally going up to 1 full turn.

 

The tires were in fact taking most of the load, The suspension was "jacking down" and the springs were not coming back up fast enough to reduce the overall increased efective compressed rate- thuis the tires had to then absord the bumps and thus causing the car to wander

 

I think mine go about 2 1/3 turns? Both go the same amount.

Anyway I hope to do the rear suspension this weekend then I may drive it to work a few days. I work 40 miles away so I can try 2 settings a day for 40 miles each.

 

Thse examples are for how a car turns, not the the main focus of toe. So that senerio of the pole and the wall were for what tire turns the car, not about toe out or toe in.

Keep in mind that we are talking about static settings (static meaning when the car is sitting still and no forces are acting upon anything.)

With dynamic toe, even static toe-out settings will toe out even more in dynamic motion. THe more the car varies from dynamic 0 (zero or neutral toe) the more the car will wander. Too much toe in will scrub and lift the nose of the car, but that lifting force of course weights the nose and will keep the car more stable than would toe out which squats the car. Think of your feet coming together (you stand up taller) or your feet going apart (you go into the splits and thus you are shorter). The idea of a little toe-in settings at static form is so that everything is close to zero in dynamic form. Zero is good for straight line (Always err slightly on the toe-in side), and Toe out is good for turning and bad for straight line tire wear. On the street you are mostly going straight. An autox track you are pretty much ALWAYS turning.

 

If you turn that Rebound up full, you had better have very firm rate springs that will force the sspension back down. If the shock overpowers the spring, the wheel will not return to the ground and skip over the pavement.

On the other hand also- you do not want the spring to overpower the shock either- this is what happens with stiff springs and poor shock damper (low damper settings) the car will bouce you aroungd in the drivers seat like a bobblehead dash doll

 

Great points on the Ice skating and walking examples Reid. Speed skates will use the outside skate to turn only becasue they have the ability to lift it and cross it over the inside skate- thus momentarily making it the inside skate. When you run, you plant onthe outsside foot but its merely to brce your body as you thrust your inside foot, leg, in that direction to tug your body that way.

 

Thanks STG crystal clear!

So is my 1/32 toe out a bad idea or is it acceptable? Seemed like the way to go at the time. Im not unhappy with the way it drives. Almost everybody on frrax is toe out. Very few toe in. They say the track wear balances out the street wear and tires are worn evenly when they are done.

 

If you stick your car in Toe-out 1/32" I will give you about 2000 milesw of street driving and you will be wandering around and fiddling with the steering wheel as you drive down a 45moh road. You rotate the tires and if will go away for awhile but wil come back again in aout another 2000 miles. I would keep a street car at 3/32 toe in.

 

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