dan_uk

Yea I am not expert but from the UK specs I would definitely lose some rear toe. My old car had the uk alignment I think its the excess toe in that made it so the backend was hard to get to breakaway and scary when it did.

So 0.20 / 0.25 toe in at the rear on each side and it should be so you can toss the rear about a bit but it will be controllable.
Also people say toe is what realy wears you tires more than camber.

Instead of caster I just get my alignment guy to max out front camber. I assume that gives the front tires more grip so it shouldn't push. I know caster affects camber in a turn but most people here seem to go for camber at the front instead of max caster.

As I understand Caster also gives you more steering feel it makes the wheel heavier. More caster makes the wheel snap back to center faster if you let go when its turned. Anything over about 5.0 degrees caster feels good to me. I have bent my suspension arm so I only have 4 degrees caster on each side right now. The car feels slugglish to turn in and I have to work the wheel more. The wheel doesn't pull to center like it should I realy don't like it.

So this is basically my alignment I use on my 03 with the stock susp/wheels and tire sizes and it works great

front:
Max camber -(1.6-2.0)
Then Max caster (5.2-5.5+?)
0 toe

rear:
Max camber -(1.8-2.2)
Toe in: between 0.20/0.25 each side.

kndonlee

If I remember correctly, having more toe-in gives better high speed stability.

// = wheels

Toe in:
// \\

Toe out:
\\ //


The reasoning is that when the car hits small bumps or aberrations in the road, the toe being in constantly pushes the left and right wheels directionally inward, so you continue to go in a straight line.

It would make sense for europe to have a more aggressive toe-in setup as they have more high speed roads?

If you prefer toe out, then this gives the car a tendency to go left and right, but also works to give better turn-in and help induce oversteer on FWD cars for cornering. Trying to go straight with an aggressive toe-out setup would drive most people nuts constantly counter-steering to compensate.

s2kdriver80

Rodney, dan_uk, kndonlee -

Thanks for your informative feedback. Pretty much the same things that Rodney has been telling me online. Great to talk with knowledgeable guys on here.

So after gathering information here and thinking things through, I think for now initially, I think I should go with the UK spec for everything, and the CR spec for the rear toe.


UK alignment with CR rear toe

Front
Left/Right Caster: +6.75 / +6.75
Left/Right Camber: -1.00 / -1.00
Left/Right/Total Toe: 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00

Rear
Left/Right Camber: -2.00 / -2.00
Left/Right/Total Toe: +0.215 / +0.215 / +0.43


From what has been told to me, too much rear toe-in keeps the rear at the rear when turning and less of it makes it looser. So going from an AP1 suspension to the CR suspension, it makes sense to decrease the rear toe-in a bit to compensate and make the car less understeery. Maybe in future alignments, I'll decrease the rear toe-in even more, but I want to be safe and conservative for now.

As for camber, want to have better stability in cornering with a better contact patch, so that's self explanatory. It has been said, camber hurts start/stop, but that doesn't really matter to me. Handling is priority.

So in a nutshell, minimal rear toe-in for the tossability and less understeer, and more camber for better turning stability. And more caster for "better" steering feel and more camber sweep at turn-in.

Ks320

[quote name='SiDriver' date='Jan 1 2009, 12:27 PM'] Np, I found the US AP1 and the CR specs whlie searching s2ki and for the UK specs, I had to convert from degree-minutes to degree-decimals since the latter seems to be more common for US applications.

Anyway, aren't you running CR suspension on an AP1 or AP2?