Toe In, Toe Out or Straight Ahead
 

Like it says, which is best for your RX-7 if you are doing mostly highway driving. I've been messing with mine and am getting curious. I've heard people say toe it in a bit, others say toe it out. For some reason nobody seems to think straight ahead is a good idea, not sure why.

Thanks
Ray

Straight ahead tends to rut ride more and is not that friendly with Maccadam style roadbeds. Toe in is the better of the 3, iirc.

Toe in for highway driving, put personally I drive with a strong grip on the wheel and I always set my toe to 0.

I always ran 0 to slight toe out.

Racers tend to run toe out due to a "Ackerman deficiency" in the RX7 front suspension. To correct this issue Ackerman correcting strut spacers were created.
With the improved Ackerman running toe in loses its drawbacks. Generally speaking.

http://www.gforceengineering.net/products.htm

Slight toe in for normal driving, it keeps the tires from wandering as much. For autox you would want slight toe out as it helps make the steering a bit quicker. Zero may not be good because you end up with sometimes toe in and sometimes toe out because of normal looseness in the steering geometry.

Toe in is definately the way to go for a daily driver. 0 toe will result in a very darty front end and require a lot of attention on controling the car. Toe in generally increases straight line stability, making the car more stable at high speeds. I'm not sure about toe out though. Mostly only racers use any kind of toe out on any car.

toe in is more stable,out is more responsive, but the manufacturer specs are usaually the best route to go for daily driving(i could find the manufaturer specs at work tommorow if youd like?)

Don't mean to jack your thread ray, but don't want to start a new one. Whats the best choice for dd in the city? Thanks

Toe in.

How much toe in should i do tho? My front wheels are almost bald on the outside. I'm going to get new tires and get it balanced right.

So Toe In is the way to go for daily driving, espcially the interstate driving I do. But like twinkletoes says (what a name, twinkletoes, now I see why he's interested in TOE in, get it?) how much toe in should you have?

I've always set the front of the wheels 1/8" closer than the back, using the string wrapped around the car technique. This has worked well for several different cars, but recently my 84 GSL has developed a slight driver's side pull I can't seem to get out.

I even had it done "professionally" today and they checked the camber and everything they do with a full alignment, and said everything was OK. But now I'm not sure if they even changed the toe in, it had the same left ward pull when I left the shop. I'll have to give them a call.

Anyway, guess if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself. I'll get out the strings and mess with it some this weekend, putting in a little more toe in this time.

Thanks guys for the help, Trochoid what does "rut ride" mean?

Ya i get it. I just used that name cause its funny. Ray, How much does it cost for them to check everything? Thanks

$49.00 they charged me, the toe in adjustment alone would have been just $15. I should have gone for that!

Cool. I'll have them do that when i get my new tires. Thanks Ray

did they give you a print out? if not they should of . assuming everything is in spec, check air pressures and rotate your tires, then see which way the car pulls. if it pulls right you have a radial pull and need new tires anyway.

0 toe daily driving. a bit toe out spirited driving and toe in for the shows or cruising

Be very careful with any sort of toe out. This can induce oversteer in the worst of circumstances...

Hey this is Jefferson, not Atlanta. Jefferson Tire and Grill doesn't give print outs, but they're nice folks and when I stopped back in after work today we had a good long talk about toe in, toe out, delaminating tires, roll overs and stuff like that.

Now eventually the guy came up with some country wisdom and suggested we swap the front tires, which I had already thought off and was going to do tomorrow, but since he had the garage and it was raining, I let him take the credit.

Well it didn't totally work, but it did take out about half the pull to the left out and it's pretty close to not noticeable. I think if I do about a 1/3 crank to shorten the drivers's tie rod and a 1/2 crank to lengthen the passenger's tie rod, kind of reduce the toe out, like Kenetsu says, I just might be back in alignment heaven, kind of right with god, if you know what I mean (that's a Southern phrase).

Ray

For street driving, toe in. How much? Depends on what bushings you have in the tension rods. Soft stock rubber needs more toe in ( up to 1/4 total), and stiffer poly ones less (1/8"). Basically the reason you run static toe in is that under load, the tension rods are pulled backwards. This causes the wheels to toe out. So you want enough toe in to compensate for this so that when driving, the dynamic or running toe is 0 or slightly in for better stability, but not so much that you wear out the tires. Since the amount of deflection is more with the stock bushings, thats why you would want more static toe in than with the harder poly ones.

Good point Carl. If you still have soft (or corroded, cracked, old, etc.) tension rod bushings and try to run with zero toe bad things can happen. When you hit the brakes, the front wheels will pull back slightly using the slop provided by those worn or soft bushings. Once this happens, you have toe out, which can produce a darting front end under braking. And to make matters even worse, the harder you brake the more toe out you will get. So a panick stop could result in a spin, or at least have you going in a direction you didn't intend to go... My car is much more stable under hard braking since I did the polygraphite bushings in the tension rods. :)

If you correct your ackerman and you can run toe in with your car optimized for spirited driving.

With all of this tow in and tow out stuff yall talking about all I can think is...

yall tow up!!!!

Ah, valuable input from the new guy... :(

Yeh, now there are two toe in/toe our phrases I don't have a clue about, Trochoid's "rut ride" and DaIdiot's "ya'll tow up". Does this mean vote Republican?

I'm going out to crank on my tie rods today, I'll let you know how it goes - I'm guessing, from the comments on this post, that I don't have quite enough toe in and that's why it's acting a little squirrelly.

Ray

When the pavement is old, it will develop "ruts" where the tires always run and the pavement kind of sinks down a bit. When the car tends to want to stay in those ruts, it is refered to as "rut-riding". I hope this helps clear up any confusion.. :)