Here... that's enough of that sort of talk!

 

DavidM, maybe your allignment got out of spec from driving over bumps, you cannot expect the allignement to be perfect a year after buying the car.

 

Well, when the suspension compresses, there's negative camber, could this be partially the problem?

 

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.... maybe your allignment got out of spec from driving over bumps, you cannot expect the allignement to be perfect a year after buying the car....
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My car is barelly 8 months old and has about 6k miles on it. I don't drive on b-grade roads and I don't recall hitting any pot-holes of significance. You could be right but having the car go from 'toe-in' to 'toe-out' without any real provocation should not happen. I'm be more inclined to think that it was like this from the start ..... I'll report on how it now handles over the next couple of weeks, but I can say that untill now (over the last 8 months) the car has felt about the same and I have not noticed any degredation is handling. I have adjusted the behaviour a tad with the tyre pressures over the last 8 months but nothing major.

I could be clutching at straws but having 'toe-out' could explain some of the undesired handling traits that I've experienced over the last 8 months; like:
- back drifting out around off-camber corners at moderate speeds (because the outside wheel gets even more load and the 'toe-out' rolls the back out of the corner).
- power-oversteer at reasonably low revs (3 - 5k) in slippery conditions (ie. cold or wet).

I'll monitor this behavious now and see if it's any different.

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Q: Also, how do you explain the wear on the inside of front tyres on all S2000s concidering that the front has minimal negative camber?

A: Well, when the suspension compresses, there's negative camber, could this be partially the problem?
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Maybe. Though, what do you mean 'when the suspension compresses'? Do you mean with people in the car, with the weight of the car over the wheels or under cornering? If it's under cornering then it's the outside of the tyre that takes the beating not matter how much camber you got dialled in. If you mean that the 'load of the car' increases the negative camber then yeah, that could have something to do with it. How much could be attributed to this depends on how much negative camber this induces .... which I'm not sure about, maybe someone else knows.

 

..... or maybe in North America they tend to exaggerate a little.

 

.... or even a lot

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DavidM
[B
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Q: Also, how do you explain the wear on the inside of front tyres on all S2000s concidering that the front has minimal negative camber?

 

OK, it's 3 days later and I've now gone 2x to a nearby twissty piece of road. I know the road very well and go though there very often (that's where I benchmark handling on most cars). Anyway, in both instanced I did not manage to make the back step out. This is while driving 'fast' ... I am (and never was) attempting to get the back to step out. There's this one corner where the back always stepped out because there is a bump on entry as well as on the exit of the corner. Before my allignment I always had to wind a good doze of opposite lock through there. Not the case anymore .... I'll have to up my speed though this particular corner to see how much faster I can go through there as the speeds I'm doing now was fast enough before to make the back step out.

I can't believe that this is not how my car was not set up in the 1st place ..... my main hesitation in ranking the S2000 handling above some other cars always was that the limits don't seem as high as I've experienced in other cars (they were high but in the back of my mind I was thinking that in a different car I could do this faster). I'm not ready to draw that conclusion just yet but the S2000 has been elevated another notch in my eyes now that I've got toe-in setup instead of toe-out.

ps. Shingles, yeah, it could be, but the S2000 has very little negative camber at the front ... almost none so that would imply that the S2000 wshould have less inside-front wear than other performance oriented cars.

 

hey S2KALI,
im sorry but your avatar really disturbs me. Im a fan also but posting a huge fat picture under my SN is just something i would not do. I mean when scrolling down this thread im used to avatars that are cartoonish and funny or whatever then bam i hit yours and im like oh geez hmmm okay i guess somebody has a thing for tiger woods. Well anyways sorry to get off topic you guys, and yeah alignment get fix yeah okay, s2ks kick ass sorry if i dissed your avatar s2kali.

 

Another day with a lot of 'good' driving behind me (ie. I managed to put my 'new' allignment though more paces). 1st I took ot to about 220kph (with the roof down) and the car felt very good there. On the same trip I did a lot of 100 - 160kph driving and car felt nice and stable at these speeds.

Then I took the car to some nice twisty local streets (Alexandra Ave and Yarra Blv) - car handled like a dream. I came in too hot into one particular corner, I usually go though it at about 100kph but this time my entry speed was much closer to 125kph. I mucked up and to make sure that I didn't understeer of the road I got most way around that corner off throttle (1/2 of thottle) and was expecting the back to step out. Though the car never twitched just washed of speed and pulled around the corner. Absolutelly no movement from the back :-) I'm so impresssed then I had to go up and down a few times :-) I can't believe how 'stuck' the back is now - all just because of allignment.