Basic Alignment Information

[Garett 103]

Ive taken information from other sites and placing it here so we can all know the basics

First things first - TOE.

What is toe? Imagine standing upright , looking at your feet. Now imagine your feet are your front (or rear) wheels. Move your toes so they are pointing away from each other - this is toe-out. The opposite is toe-in.

Most cars come from the factory set up with a pretty 'normal' setup, meaning that they are pretty close to parallel. This is the recommended starting setting (parallel).

As a rule, toe-in creates stability at the expense of response, and toe-out enhances and sharpens response at the expense of outright stability.

Rear toe settings.

Most drifters tend to run with as close to parallel on the rear as possible - adding toe-in on the rear will make it harder to initiate (because the rear wil be more planted), and when grip is regained, it will do so quite suddenly. However, error on the side of toe-in is preferred as running rear toe-out wil make the car very jittery and difficult to drive with any confidence.

Front toe settings.

Front toe-in aids straight line stability at speed at the cost of slower turn in - and front toe out will make it twitchier at speed but turn in quicker. But going too far will end up making the car unstable at any kind of speed. If you go too far the car will become very snappy and difficult to drive - and thoroughly excessive toe settings on the front will mean that the front tyres are always on the verge of losing grip - again, not inspiring confidence and promoting the dreaded understeer. For a starting figure, look to be having about 1-2mm of toe-out, and you won't be far off (as a starting point).

--Body roll takes away camber.

--Beating body roll by dropping the car's center mass is a big win.

--Beating body roll with sway bars is not entirely a win. Sway bars reduce traction because they lift the inside tire. If you have plenty of rear traction, for example, then reduce body roll by tightening the rear bar. That way you're stealing traction from where you can afford it.

All information found is information on other sites and may not be completely accurate, correct me if its wrong.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Garett

[thorburn 121]

'Body roll decreases adds negative camber' would be a nicer way to put it. The majority of cars have a negative static camber value (the top of the tyre leans towards the car).

"Beating body roll by dropping the car's center mass is a big win" - I do not agree with this. I believe for a lot of people it creates more problems then it solves.

Yes lowering the car gives less leverage over the suspension "beating body roll".

But here are some of the reasons I don't agree with it:(mostly talking about macpherson front struts)

Hitting bump stops due to less suspension travel.

Bump steer caused by different steering link travel compared with control arm travel.

Roll centre otp causing unwanted camber changes during suspension travel

Excessive static camber gained

What happens when you lower the back end of an e30, e36ti or z3?

Some of these are only due to excessive lowering

'Sway bars reduce traction because they lift the inside tire'- How much weight is being distributed to that inside tyre during body roll?

It'd be nice if they explained why toe settings do what they do on the front and back. I'll add my view on this when i've got some time

I hope my explinations make up for my lack of real experience

[Garett 103]

Can people add knowledge for the basics as you find it in your travels or if you just know it. would be nice if anyone could just come to this forum to get all the info instead of spending hours looking

Thanks for your input Thorburn

[westy 614]

http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=800&page=1

[hybrid 1044]

I have found over a bit of time playing with my own setups and others as well as being involved with various racing projects that there is defanitely no one size fits all.

A lot of people going into creating a great handling car with the mind set that its needs to be race track ready all of the time, when they forget what they use the car for most of the time.

The ideal setup for the track is to raise the strut towers, enlarger the guards. raise the subframe and suspension hard mount points including steering into the chassis as much as possible. This is totally inpractical for the road and will actually make the car handle worse on most road surfaces.

The sway bar debate is also very subjective. What is true however is your sway bar tension needs to be matched to your spring rate. Putting in bigger bars is useless without a harder spring rate because all that happens is the bars end up doing the work on the loaded wheel which their not really designed for.

Having a flat setup can help with putting out of corner power down. But really doesnt help with early/mid corner traction. This is where softening the rear sway bar and or stiffening the front sway bar can help. But it may drop out your out of corner settledness of the rear.

I have the luxary of adjustible sway bars, and have been playing around with settings at hampton for a while now. Still have some issue myself with rear traction on slicks, but thats because of A ) lead foot too much B ) road LSD isnt designed for sticky slicks and hamptons grip levels so ends up slipping the LSD because it cant unload the loaded tyre and C ) I dont have traction control (because of problem with A) ).

My way isnt the only way of setting up a car, Jamez has pretty much the same car accept he has different spring rates and different sway bar setup and different diff. But his car is 100% track dedicated, mine isnt, its still a road car.

I use to want all of the rose jointed fully adjustible fancy group-A/DTM setup .. but then I like driving b-roads in the weekend too.