What would having lots of rear toe in do to the handling of the car and wear of the tires? My guess is more tire wear right?

 

More tire wear (especially on the outside edge) and I believe more understeer.

 

It means you will need new tires for the back every 2000 miles.

 

I think inside edges would wear like crazy due to the neg camber (were talking rears right?)

 

I agree, lots of rear toe bias the car toward understeer and also increases wear, as the tires will be constantly scrubbing slightly sideways. I am using a custom alignment with almost zero rear toe with positive improvements in both areas.

 

I had a semi-full alignment done for street and autocross (camber set to the maximum negative value for the stock range - -1 front, -2 rear) and 0 toe front, 0.5" toe-IN rear. I did this to try to help the tail-happy nature with R-compound tires that don't come in a broad enough range of sizes. I've got about 10K miles on the car this way and am on my second set of tires (the S02s were replaced at 10.5k miles with Potenza RE730s). I'm happy to report rather even wear (it's not perfect but it ain't bad) across the face of the tire. If there's extra wear, it's on the INSIDE edge, not outside, due to the camber, not toe. Most driving is local but I have used the car for long trips, too. The only thing I've noticed is a bit of "dartiness" to the car - it seems to always want a little steering correction. If I were to do it again, I'd use no more than .25" total toe-in to reduce this effect.

Since I'll be getting the Comptech front bar, rear toe will get much smaller this year...

 

So you'd recommend 0 toe in back? Do you autox or track race? Can you comment on handling on the track?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by marcucci

 

Here are the comments from Mugen engineers on the subject. I would think that zero toe in the rear would result in more oversteer than most want.

[B]Front and rear toe alignment.

The front and rear toe alignment, along with the ground clearance adjustment, is a very effective method to change the car

 

cdelena, I agree. Everyone who fools with the cornering balance of their car can decide for themselves what balance is most comfortable. By the way, Mugen engineers didn't talk about front camber in their paper - I don't understand why not. Getting the front tires working properly is very important for balance, performance and wear.

Also, at my last track event at Sears Point, a Russell school instructor compared my car to a car running Kumho R-compounds. He said my car had better cornering grip, even though I was running factory tires. I attribute this to good alignment setup, everthing else on my car is stock except for brake pads and fluid. I had no trouble running faster laps than the other car. However, this may also be partially due to relative driver experience.