Yeah, there are some guys in some Gateway S2000 club that supposedly do detail days - usualy hosted by some guy named 8BALL - I showed up to one and they helped me turn my Black car into a nice shade of charcoal grey You should check them out

 

 

[QUOTE=frankcandy610,Sep 11 2007, 03:05 PM]i dont really understand what the specs means... and also dont know whats the difference between adjusting camber and toe..

 

If I can add to this, more caster gives you more negative camber ONLY when the front wheels are steering/turning.

THe overall goal of these specs are to "stabilize" the car under very hard driving, and allow for more of the tire to be used under hard cornering.

Going streight down the road (80% of street driving) you dont need the added stability or cornering grip - you just want good even tire wear and streight line traction.

However, if you are more inclined to take croners really fast on the street or take the car to a circuit, you will quickly realize that the optimum street set-up is not so great on the track and in our case it makes for a very tail-happy handling experience.

The increased rear toe in is an attempt at stoping the tail-happyness by pointing the tires in to the middle of the car. Whatever conclusions you draw from aligning the car this way, keep in mind that everyone drives differently, alignments usually are compromises of tire wear vs. handling grip, and the Honda engineers and test drivers in the UK probably knwo a thing or two about getting the most out of a stock S2000 for track driving.

OK I better quit now, I think Dave is reading this and about to lay the engineering/physics smack down on this thread

 

He's an Aerospace Engineer, isn't he? This is Mechanical Engineering, but let's keep it Civil

So says the Software Engineer

 

I'm a trained Aerospace Engineer with a Mechanical Engineering background from FSAE and a professional Software Engineer

Nick's post passes inspection though

For those interested, remebering back to high school geometery will help here. The most important thing to remember in alignment is that you need three (no more and no less) points to define a plane in space. Now imagine holding two of those points constant while moving the third. The plane will rotate around the line the two constant points create.

Toe is when you rotate the wheel assembly about a vertical axis, making the front of the wheel point either in or out. Camber is when you rotate the assembly about a horizontal axis, either tipping the top of the tire inwards (negative camber) or outwards (positive camber). Camber is used to keep the tread flat on the ground when rolling in a corner. Generally negative camber is employed to make sure the loaded wheel, the outside wheel in a turn, keeps the most contact with the road. However, the more camber you have, the less contact patch you will have going in a straight line. Unequal length, dual wishbone suspension (like on the S2000) can be used to mitigate some of this trade off, but that's another subject Toe and camber are adjusted on both the front and rear wheels.

Caster is when you change the steering axis from straight vertical to slightly diagonal, and is therefore only adjusted on the front. This means that when you steer, the outside wheel gains negative camber and the inside wheel gains positive camber. This works in conjunction with the rolling of the car to keep the tread flat on the ground. and has the benefit of only adding camber when you are in a turn and need it.

 

.. and Frank asked for it to "be easy"

Summary: keep to the standard Honda USA specs for the AP2 unless there's some handling characteristic that you're not happy with, or you plan to track the car, but be aware that any alignment 'improvements' will likely shorten your tread-life, & may work well in some conditions but less well in others...

Frank, what is it that you are looking to achieve from an alignment? That might help us give you better advice in terms of what spec range to try for toe, camber & caster.

 

thank u guys so much... i did learn a lot from ur guys' reply..

hehe...i think i will stick with the US specs coz i m not tatolly sure about what kind of spces that i want

i understand what the toe and camber is right now... but still have some problem about understanding how to adjust the caster from negative to positive.... i looked at the illustration many times that Julie gave me, try to figure out how to adjust caster.... i think i have to get more and more knowledge about control arm or some stuff associated with..

thanks dave, nick, gram and Julie..

if u guys can post some more, that will be helpful to me for not being a freshmen for the S... at least i wann be a junior ^-^