Hello, been reading up on a lot of threads and seen a variety of alignment recommendations for track. A lot of these recommendations come from stock to fairly modified. My car is not a daily driver anymore and will see more track and autox duty. (my local track mostly stays in 3rd gear and is hard on brakes). I've finally scheduled an alignment with a local race shop and wanted to go with a more aggressive alignment after my first track day and autox on the below mod setup. I am not concerned with tire wear since it is getting driven on the streets less.

My 06 AP2 has the following:

Ohlins DFV Coilovers (lowered 3/4" front and rear) with 12k springs front, 10k rear
Staggered 235 (17x8) front tires and 255 (17x9) rear (Science of Speed S2000 wheels) on Falken RT660
Stock swaybars (will install a Karcepts front bar later down the road)
Fenders not rolled, no aero.

Kind of meshing together what I've seen, I was thinking of having the shop do these specs (if physically possible)

6.5 caster
-2.5 front camber (maybe will try -3 if physically possible)
-3 rear camber
0 toe front
1/8 toe in for rear

Welcome to any thoughts or feedback.

 

At the end of the day you will need a lot more seat time to notice alignment subtleties. That said.... If memory serves without offset bushings or adjustable ball joints you wont be able to get more than 1.7-2.0 front camber depending on your ride height, subframe centering, and mfg tolerance stackups. Being staggered will make the car understeer in steady state and under acceleration. Make the rear camber match the front whatever your max front allows. Put a little toe in the rear but not too much since a little less toe will help the staggered car rotate. If you make the front roll stiffer with a swaybar it will only understeer more. Buy a square setup or a miata swaybar for the rear.

 

Are you on stock camber adjusters? I think you need closer to a 1 to 1.5 inch drop to get to -2.5 front camber with OEM suspension, tolerance stacking permitting as mentioned above. I would not get the karcepts bar for a staggered car. You may still benefit from a stiffer front sway bar with the grippier tires but I think the Karcepts likely is too much. Even with 255 you will feel it push slightly in certain situations. It tightens up turn in response significantly but you will feel the outside corner load up more in certain corners. It’s manageable as you just add a little bit more steering angle if necessary and the trade off for cornering stability and mid corner control is worth it for me but with less tire I would be hesitant and I think it would cause actual understeer.

 

Thanks! Yes, I am still on the stock camber adjusters, so I will just have to see what kind of camber I could get. Maybe -2 at best.

Noted on the swaybars, I was looking at the thinner of the two swaybars offered but will now reconsider my options.

 

Karcepts has recommendations for settings on a non square setup. Thst bar imo is incredible. Its so easy to make adjustments and dial in under/oversteer.

-2* camber is not enough. -3 front would be decent for tire life if you drove on the street a bit. Im currently at -3.7f and -2.8r
ballade has a plate that bolts between the stock balljoint and knuckle. For the price its the best thing to get for more camber.

 

You probably will get some where in between -2 and -2.5. At stock height I think my oem adjusters maxed out at just a touch under -2; I think one side was -2 and the other was -1.9. Since you are lowered you likely will get slightly more. Just max out the fronts and run the same in the back as a ball park. Toe and sway bars get pretty personal. I like running relatively low rear toe, something like .15 to .25 total toe in. But others also like oem toe. As a starting point you could just leave the toe the same as where it is now on your car, as long as it’s somewhere reasonable. This will be a familiar starting point for you and also somewhat allow you to isolate the difference that the camber is making.

Edit: Since Karcepts revised their center core offerings I kind of forgot where they landed now. The turned down center core is softer than I remembered off the top of my head but not as soft as their old setups. It doesn't hurt to leave it as one of those TBD things and just feel out the car. I know the Moddiction/Saner bars are hard to find now days. The SBG sway bar seems like somewhere between Eibach and the Cusco bar based on the specs but these things are hard to spit ball.

 

Get as much negative camber as you can. Pure track cars, ideally in the -3deg range or more, so I'd say get as much as you can out of your setup. As a generalization for starting points, I recommend even spring rates front and rear if you're going near stock stagger. If one goes non-staggered, I recommend about 20% stiffer front spring rate which is what you have. But you have staggered tire setup, so your car is going to push. To work with what you have, maybe a few things to try:

• less rear negative camber
• 0 rear toe
• softer front sway bar and stiffer rear bar
  • if you go too stiff on the rear bar, you could end up lifting the inside rear tire coming out of corners and lose drive

Might not be too bad to just get new rear springs to match the front spring rates.

My setup that I've been very happy with and plenty of people have driven my car hard with no prior seat time and hauled ass.

245/40/17s all around on 17x9
RE71Rs
KW Clubsports with 12k/10k
Whiteline front bar
no rear bar
-2.8 camber front and rear (could probably use a bit more, just never got around to adjusting)
6.5 caster front, zero toe
1/16" toe-in rear