This is a pretty important thing and i only found so much info searching. Can anyone give an exact spec layout for a shop to do a decent alignmet on our cars when the car is lowered? Preferably, the specs should have in mind driving habits that are spirited but be safe for highway and street( i actually hate highways and never use them)......i had heard that we should adjust our front struts to obtain 0 or negative degree toe and that camber should be a couple degrees negative. Is that right? what about the rest? Thanks a lot everyone

 

OK many points here, do you ever autocross, what tires do you have, are the roads flat or are you in the hills, do you commute in the car or is it all for fun?

No one alignment will work for every modified car, you need to adjust to find what suits your car, your style and your tire budget.

That said, negative camber is for aggressive cornering, toe and caster should remain to factory specs for road, IMHO.

BTW Toe is, toe in or, toe out, not negative toe...

Find a shop who work with race cars, they're the most experienced and usually helpful

Steve

 

i have no shops like that (that are reliable) here in vegas......it is my daily driver, i like corners, have good tires, i guess i'll just do more research and leave it up mostly to the shop..........any recommendations for a street setup(mostly straight roads but i like the twisties when i can find em)...thanks for the help aussie, you are great

 

With camber you are limited to about 0.5-1* negative. To get any more you need to modify the struts or control arms or install camber plates. I prefer to run as much as 5* caster as it increases dynamic camber while cornering. Toe in is adjusted by the turning the tie rods and should be about 1mm-2mm.

 

While 5 degrees of negative camber can be wonderful for handling in hard corners your inside edge of your tires are going to wear incredibly fast on a daily driver, about 1 degree for a street car is pretty wild in reality.

 

ok, i am starting to understand now, i found a guy in town who aligns lowered cars and he is highly recommended, i'll just have him make it as modest and straight forward for the street as possible...i dont want to replace tires constantly when they arent even used up all the way....thanks for the help guys, would you like me to post the setup i get for future use?

 

Absolutely, and take it back after a couple of thousand miles so he can inspect the wear, it can be adjusted as needed at that time.

 

I'll put this in terms you guys seem to talk. When you lower the rear of a 1st gen RX-7 you **** up the trans/drive shaft angle & you **** up the rearend pinion/driveshaft angle. These angles should be approx equal or you will wonder where the vibrations came from. & the incorrect angles will wear out the bushing in the tail shaft of the transmission.

REVHED is on the money for camber with no modifications & you also will not get 5 degree castor with out modifications.

I use 2 1/5 degree negative front camber with 3/64 toe out, 1 degree negative rear camber with zero rear toe on a road race car & about 7* castor on the same road race car. Tire temps are taken at the track & changes are made at the track to equalise the temps. If ya want tires to last don't do this **** to your street car.

 

3/64" toe out?....on an RX-7? I thought toe in was the way to go...or are you refering to a FWD race car? Seem like a weird setup to me, but Im not a racer or anything...