ValveBounce

For those of you who have asked for a bit more background info, here we go:

The initial cost estimate from CG was £460 inc VAT for the assessment, clean/lube the geo bolts and then suspension adjustment/set-up. As it happens I got lucky and the majority of my geo bolts were in pretty perfect condition so the total bill was £417 inc VAT due to less labour required than first thought. If the work had run over the estimate they currently charge £72/hr for extra.

As other forum members have said, they do not have a "standard" set-up, they ask what sort of driving you will do and then set up accordingly. So, for me, I wanted the geometry to work for spirited road driving on fast B-roads, never going on the track. I wanted the back end to be "predictable" and give some warning if it was going to let go and finally a car that my wife could drive at more moderate speeds and still enjoy.

I'm not a car expert, nor am I experienced with car set-up, but I do understand mechanical principles and common sense mechanics. I followed all the logic of Chris's and Pete's suggestions with the toe, camber etc and while I haven't yet done many miles it feels good so far.

Lastly, here are the before and after settings for those who wanted to see:

Define198

what year is your car? judging by the toe its a pre 2004 car?

EDIT -

just noticed your OP, your car is a 2009? Seems a lot of toe? i thought the pre 2004 cars had that sort of toe and 04-09 cars had around 0.12 per side? so they have roughly doubled the standard spec toe! wonder how much this will effect tyre wear

and judging by the print out they have used the spec for the pre2004 car due to it saying 0.25 per side is the standard? im confused lol

ValveBounce

OK, let's start from the beginning. Yes, it's a 2009 car.

Also, when you say "0.25" I am assuming you mean 0' 25", as they are different measurements.

When I took my car to CG they were very careful to run through all the different sets of geo figures for the S, including the American set up (negligible toe), the Japanese option and the pre/post 2004 UK figures. They also explain why each set up works (or not) for each circumstance. Look again at the original set up for mine, it has never been adjusted and everything suggests it left the factory with a peculiar geo that didn't match anything!

So, then after careful questioning about how the car would be used and what I wanted a "bespoke" set up was dialled in. After all, to my mind this is one of the reasons you go to specialist. Any half decent workshop can just set book figures, a specialist will tailor the geo to what you want or need for how you will drive the car. A track set up for an experienced driver would be very different again.

Finally, yes more tyre wear and possibly a slight worsening of fuel consumption, but a more progressive back end that will of course let go if aggravated but will warn you first (providing you are driving sensibly). CG were at pains to point all of this out so there were no surprises.

PS Mr Lovegroova has far more experience than me in the S, I notice the set up figures he had together with the adjustments over the years are in the same ballpark as mine, albeit for a different year car. Perhaps he could advise better than I if he thinks a bespoke geo worked and is worth the money?

Define198

i have no doubt at all that they know exactly what they are doing, and im sure the settings they have dialed in for you will work no problem, its just that i have never seen a facelift car set with those toe settings before

lovegroova

I learned a lot from Chris (I only vaguely knew what "tracking" was when I bought the S2000).

As I say, Chris set stuff up according to my requirements "help me not to crash it" and you can see that we made various adjustments over the years as my experience and, I like to think, skill level improved - I was having lots of track related instruction, as well as some road based stuff too.

Incidentally, the instruction made a much, much bigger difference to the way the car performed than alignment changes. Everyone should take note of this.

You can see that we change the caster from somewhere near the middle, to the minimum, the maximum and back to somewhere near the middle as I preferred the way the car steered that way. We also increased the camber all around.

In the end I switched to having my car aligned at Wheels In Motion for a few reasons, the main one being that they are much closer to me. In addition, I had found a set up that I liked with Chris, so it was merely a matter of getting things redone once a year. The settings will go out of alignment quite significantly in that period of time.

With WiM I did reduce the rear toe (in part because I had the hardrace spherical toe arms fitted).

With my new car, I have pretty much gone for the factory settings, so much less rear toe than on the old car.

I'm sure Chris could explain why he has put so much on VB's car, but I'm don't know enough to comment, really. Again, it will have been as a result of the conversation with VB.

chrispayze

A large amount of rear toe increases rear stability, especially on lift off of throttle mid corner, when the passive rear steer will tend to reduce toe of the rear wheels. Chris did the same to mine when I was new to the S.

A bit of learning, and some new rear control arms that dialled out some of the rear steer, and I reduced the rear toe. And then followed many other tweaks, which have been great fun to test and learn about the car.