Aligning
Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 8:58 pm
Now please feel free to make this a general piece of aligning, but here follows my story from this week:
Aligned my EJ9 this week (copy paste from my personal topic). Is about the EJ9. The rear is at minimal toe-in, which due to the lowering is still 22'. Is actually fine for OEM car, but for a more racy setup they advice toe-out instead of toe-in.
Now the front is trickier, since I have 2deg16' camber the inside wears a lot. Especially since the EJ9 is driven a lot in a 'normal' fassion instead of 'racy'.
Now ever since I lowered the car years and years ago it has been aligned by people with some knowledge. So not factory spec toe-in, which is either 0 or 5' (a ' stands for minute which is 1/60 of a degree!) or close to nothing.
My track car has just a bit more total toe-in in the front to make it a bit more over steering and the rear is little toe-out. Somewere in the line of 10 to 20'.
Now my EJ9 has had 35' to 40' toe-in over the last years. Which I believe is quite much. I think due the toe-in at the rear it still is very stable. Tyre wear has always been acceptable and never found a sharper handling car. Well, untill my garage decided to push the tyres a little further. They went up to 1 full degree of toe-in at the front. Immediately the ride was ruined. They re-alligned back to 35' free of charge I need to add immediatly.
The few km I made with 1 full degree were like this: immens torque steer in 1st gear. Okay, we're probably all used to some degree of torque steer. But I found out I usually accelerate at the traffic light without touching the steering wheel the first split seconds. Stupid habit perhaps, but I didn't knew this until my steering wheel started spinning to the right as a mad-man. Funny way to discover torque steer.
Furthermore the car pulled to the right on high speeds, I had to steer a little left to keep straight. And the neutral zone of the car (when releasing the steering wheel while accelerating out of a corner) shifted from neatral plus a bit to somewhere between straight ahead and a lot to the right.
Besides all this, at high speed bumps (highway bumps while doing 120 kmh) the nose had a tendency to jump to the right.
So okay, I talked to my aligner. He hoped he could correct a bit more for the tyre wear by this massive toe-in. The car itself was perfectly symmetric, but the heavier weight on the left overruled and made for the asymetric ride. (Left hand drive plus engine at the left)
So now we have a correctly aligned car again and learned something about the effects toe can have... wow.
Aligned my EJ9 this week (copy paste from my personal topic). Is about the EJ9. The rear is at minimal toe-in, which due to the lowering is still 22'. Is actually fine for OEM car, but for a more racy setup they advice toe-out instead of toe-in.
Now the front is trickier, since I have 2deg16' camber the inside wears a lot. Especially since the EJ9 is driven a lot in a 'normal' fassion instead of 'racy'.
Now ever since I lowered the car years and years ago it has been aligned by people with some knowledge. So not factory spec toe-in, which is either 0 or 5' (a ' stands for minute which is 1/60 of a degree!) or close to nothing.
My track car has just a bit more total toe-in in the front to make it a bit more over steering and the rear is little toe-out. Somewere in the line of 10 to 20'.
Now my EJ9 has had 35' to 40' toe-in over the last years. Which I believe is quite much. I think due the toe-in at the rear it still is very stable. Tyre wear has always been acceptable and never found a sharper handling car. Well, untill my garage decided to push the tyres a little further. They went up to 1 full degree of toe-in at the front. Immediately the ride was ruined. They re-alligned back to 35' free of charge I need to add immediatly.
The few km I made with 1 full degree were like this: immens torque steer in 1st gear. Okay, we're probably all used to some degree of torque steer. But I found out I usually accelerate at the traffic light without touching the steering wheel the first split seconds. Stupid habit perhaps, but I didn't knew this until my steering wheel started spinning to the right as a mad-man. Funny way to discover torque steer.
Furthermore the car pulled to the right on high speeds, I had to steer a little left to keep straight. And the neutral zone of the car (when releasing the steering wheel while accelerating out of a corner) shifted from neatral plus a bit to somewhere between straight ahead and a lot to the right.
Besides all this, at high speed bumps (highway bumps while doing 120 kmh) the nose had a tendency to jump to the right.
So okay, I talked to my aligner. He hoped he could correct a bit more for the tyre wear by this massive toe-in. The car itself was perfectly symmetric, but the heavier weight on the left overruled and made for the asymetric ride. (Left hand drive plus engine at the left)
So now we have a correctly aligned car again and learned something about the effects toe can have... wow.