True.

Here's what I might do.

Bump front camber from 2.8 to 3.0, take rear camber from 2.5 to 2.3 and set toe at 1/4" (what ever that translates into degrees.) if that doesn't make it better then I'm gonna try a bigger rear bar again and/or different springs.

What's Jim's rear bar?

 

whoa dont do too much at one time otherwise your wasting valuable information by not being able to isolate what change exactly made the car better/worse. I would say try the toe-in the rear first and go from there.

Jim hasn't touched his car at all (from what he tells me) since el toro pro of 2010. In fact he told me he has no idea where his alignment is right now (lol). He still runs with no rear bar but has not come out to any of our local events. Just the tour and pro so far... not much info to go off of there.

 

Yes, and Josh, I haven't settled on springs yet. Still testing.

 

If you don't mind me asking matt, what springs have you tried that didn't work?

I'll try the toe change, then try the front camber change and go from there.

 

Josh,
I agree with most of the feedback you have received in the last day. One thing I see is that you may need to baseline your driving in another car that does not have any adjustments (i.e. a stock class car). This may not be practical, but if you could prove your driving to be consistent and mature then you could worry about car setup. Otherwise there may be too many variables happening at once meaning your really cannot tell what to change and how to read the result of a change. I think having Marc or Dave drive your car a couple runs at each event would be a good substitute. Even better would be to have them co-drive your car for an event to get a really good read on your cars handling.

Another idea would be to not change anything on your car for 4 to 5 events and evaluate the results. Get a good baseline of where the car is at then start tweaking one thing at a time.

Some Additional Points to Consider

1. Your really need a test and tune day if possible, it's hard to tune at events.
2. If you don't have one already, make a log sheet to track changes and the results (I can send you one).
3. Set an accepted spring configuration (i.e. 850/700) and then leave it, adjust everything else one at a time.
4. IMO your front sway bar should not be more than 1,000 lbs/in (you are likely exceeding 1,000 now). With street tires there is no inside rear wheel lift issue like in stock class (unless driver induced or really bad setup). Otherwise your setup will be to biased too much in one direction.
5. You need to know the ride height in the rear when considering Matt's comments on toe steer. As posted here before the toe effect on compression/reboud is dependent on the starting point of the rear toe link vertically relative to the inboard pivot point. If at or above the pivot then you will get toe in on compression. If below then toe out unless it goes above the pivot point. The opposite would apply to when rebounding.
6. Make extreme changes one at a time and record the effect (i.e. max rear compression, min rear compression)

Hope this helps.

I have not studied the AP2 rear suspension/toe link, but I would think that at some point of compression (from lowering) the toe steer effect would start to happen. This implies that the rear toe steer change for AP2 is only effective over a certain range of suspension travel (i.e. stock ride height plus or minus some amount).

 

Maybe I'm coming off as if the car sucks and isn't working. Thats not really the case, The car had two back to back racing days and had a handling issues on sat and then on sunday felt alittle pushy. I usually pax in the top 3-8 depending on the day and I've won our local STR class and also coned away a couple wins so it's not like the car just sucks.

I'm not sure what the in/lbs of my front bar are but it's 1599 lb/deg, alot of people are on the custom bar on full stiff, I'm about 600 lb/deg softer then that. so it's not really that stiff. Alot of the softer bar people have a diff and I don't. As for springs, I've said 100 times I wanted 850f/700r but they didnt have a 850 in stock so I had to go 900f. I'm going to go 850f/700r, 800f/650r or 800f/700r this winter when I tear the car down. About the rear bar, yea some run stock bars but most are no bar/miata bar so I don't think I'm outside the norm on that.

It could of just been a bad day, the course could of just had gravel all over it bc marc couldn't blow it off. The only reason I posted was because it was opposite issues on back to back days.

Like I said though, I pax in the top 8 every race, I'm ranked 6th right now in pax for the year end points. At the first event listed I was still able to drive the car to 7th in pax and that was on a "bad" day. So it's not like the car just sucks. Just wanted to make that clear.

I'm gonna to measure my rear toe, It might of been at .1 degrees toe in, in the rear. I'll let you know in a couple hours. I'm going to try and add some rear toe in and add .2 degrees camber in the front soon and see what happens.

 

I'm afraid to report back the car might be toed out.

When we aligned it 3-4 months ago we set it to .06-.1 toe in, can't remember exactly.

messured from outside grove to outside grove on the rs3's on the front of the tire it was 64 1/8-1/4 and on the back side it was right at 64.

Looks like I'll be putting the car on the alinment rack next week.


FML. I guess they came out of spec over time.

Do you all really think I need a 1/4" of toe in though? thats like .8 degrees or something.


should I add .2 degrees camber to the front which would bump the front to 3 degrees neg camber when I fix the rear toe. I'd hate to spend $100 to add toe when I know its going to make the car pushy, but if I also add the front camber I could balance it out "alittle" bit.

 

Yes, go for the 1/4" toe in. No, do not change anything else.

You need to learn how to do your own alignments. It is not hard, just takes a bit of patients. The tools will pay for themselves in not more than two alignments on the rack. You have plenty of S2000 friends that can help out. Once learned you can do it yourself. This will allow changes at events time permitting and certainly from one day to the next. You really need to stick to one change at a time and this will help alleviate your temptation because of paying so much money/time.

Alignment Tools ($110 estimated including shipping)

1. $65 Toe Plates
2. $36 Digital level for camber
3. $10 1.5" angle iron, 1/8", cut to diameter of wheel rim for camber (hardware store)

Other Tools (to be complete)

1. Jack
2. Jack Stand
3. 1/2" torque wrench
4. 1/2" 17 mm socket
5. 1/2" 4" extension
6. 17 mm wrench
7. 14 mm wrench (front toe)
8. 19 mm wrench (front toe)

• Ignore caster for now, just leave it where it is, just change toe and camber.
• Make sure to torque the alignment bolts more than what's in the book, I do 70 lbs/in to ensure no movement.
• There may be alignment procedures some where on the forum, otherwise I can start to write it up, let me know if you need something.

 

Thanks! Aaron at Winning Formula is going to do the alignment monday. I'll invest in them toe plates and such. It just sucks spending $100 every time I want to change a alignment setting. I'll change the toe only and then go from there.

 

Firestone offers a $140 life time alignment program. I was getting my car aligned every other month for a while, trying different settings. You just have to sweet talk the shop into doing the alignments more often than "every 6+ months", as is stated in the fine print.

DIY alignments work pretty well, too.