eric e

when i got my FD i was told that the suspension had been setup at great expense for handling

it came with adjustable height/damping shocks with stiff springs and 235/40-17 and 255/50?-17 wheels

it drove like a slotcar, what most members on this forum would want...i however found the car; too low, too stiff, wearing out all the insides of tires and jumping around the road on every irregularity, so i would like to get back to standard and then move forward from there

so far i have put stock shocks/springs and stock wheels/tires back on

all i have to do now is get the suspension settings back to around stock factory

under the car i can see 1 cam nut on each side for rear camber and 2 on each side up front for castor and camber, (for the moment i will ignore toe-in)

all cam nuts were set about 2 small divisons in from the longer bar center/cutout

anyone know where i will be if i set all cam nuts to the center position???

eric e

i will get around to getting a professional alignment done at some stage but until i screw it up i would prefer to make adjustments myself and learn something of the black art of suspension tuning

OC_

well, it sounds like you got a pretty sweet aftermarket coilover setup with your car. If you sell them, dont get ripped off since they are probably worth a lot more then you think! you know, the spring probably comes off of those (and the spring size is probably standered) you could just get a softer spring and raise the hight and be on your way with a much better shock then the stocker. i sure the one that came with your car was adjustable, so you could make it harder or soft.

If you touch any of the toe/camber adjustments with out the proper aligning tools, you probably have already screwed it up. There is some pretty 'grass roots' ways of doing an alignment. but i dont recomend them so much im not going to even tell you about them. We can cover those in a 200 level class

anyway, the insides of the tires wear faster when you have toe out, outsides wear with toe in. They will wear faster then normal if you have a lot of camber, but not nearly as fast as having some good toe.


for the front.
toe-out will give you car faster turn in at the expense of making your car darty, and toe-in can give you some added stability.
both of these will eat tires.

for the rear
on cars with independed rear suspension, OE specs usually have a little toe in on the rear. This is because it prevents the rear from wanting to come out durring cornering. Becuse i drive a FC, i dont know what a good rear toe is for your car. Just ask a savvy FD driver whats best for the street. probably OE.

Do you race you car at all?
i can guess, NO!
so for your Purposes, it would be best to go with stock toe settigns.


Camber tilts the top of the tires in or out. Negative camber is when the tops tilt into the car. It is understooed when you are talking putting more camber on a car or just camber in general, your talking about negative camber.

camber can make you corner better, but it will add to your braking distance and make it so you can put your power down as well.

its getting late, so im going to stop here. If you want me to say more stuff about suspensions just let me know.

eric e

thanks for the reply OC

i pretty much figured on a 10 year old car alignment/camber/castor adjustments could only be measured with the proper equipment

most likely the darting around i'm getting under mild braking, for traffic lights etc. , is due to tyres or toe-out

i have 10 wheels with tyres 4x17inch and 6x16inch, so will experiment swapping them around to see how much of the darting is tyre related, but i'm guessing the car's
had some toe-out dialed in for auto-cross or something

if moving wheels around doesn't reduce the darting i'll still have a go pulling each wheel in a turn or 2 just to see how it changes but will start asking around to find an alignment shop that understands the multi-adjustable suspension on the FD

eric e

pity the front suspension cams are hidden by the undertray or i could simply look under other FD's to get an idea of what settings are used on the average daily driver

OC_

tires that have really stiff sidewalls will tend to dart more then tires with big soft sidewalls. also, the wider the tire, the more it will want to track the road.
how is it in Nagano? im thinking of going to japan sometime.

eric e

well the shift from 235/40-17 tfront tyres to standard 16 inch wheels and tyres should help the darting anyway

nagano is good, it's where the 1998 winter olympics were, so it can be a bit cold from nov-mar
but if that's the trade off to get green mountains, open spaces, clean(ish) rivers, empty(ish) roads etc. then so be it

the traffic in tokyo drives me crazy, even when you are on the sidewalk you often can't walk straight and fast due to the throngs of slow moving people...

eric e