Alignment results: how's this look to you?

[soldave]

Got my wheel alignment today on my 1991 S5 Tii and it was pretty badly needed. When one wheel was straight the other was pointing inwards and after lifting the front of the suspension it was way out of whack. They asked me if I wanted more focus on cornering or straights so I said cornering as this'll never be a drag beast. These are the results.


To be honest I have no idea if the changes are big, or if it should be much better now. At least it drives straight when the steering wheel is straight (just about) and it feels like it wants to go around corners now. They did say the rear does have a bit more negative camber than spec because the suspension is lowering it and can't be adjusted.

Anyone got any thoughts, or is it a case of "if it feels good for you it's good"?

[RETed]

You're talking low-speed cornering performance or high-speed cornering performance?

For the MacPherson strut front, you can dial in a little more camber.
I like somewhere around -1.0 degrees and -1.5 degrees on a street set-up.
Any more camber than that and you run into premature tire wear problems.

The rears have a little too much negative camber for a street set-up.
Do you have the DTSS still active?
If so, the DTSS will automatically induce premature camber wear on the inside edges due to the change in toe.
To counter this, I try and run very little camber in the rear - usually -0.5 degrees to -1.0 degrees max.
Any more camber that that just increases the wear on the inside edges of the tires.
Camber is the rears is a delicate balance, cause you're trading cornering performance (more negative camber) with acceleration performance ("0" camber) - only you can make this decision.
Are you running a rear camber adjust bar?
Some of that excessive rear camber by collapsing the rear suspension subframe - very popular in Japan and also here in the USA.

The numbers I've given are for street driving.
They balance (premature) tire wear versus performance.
You can run more aggressive settings, but your tires are going to show it on a daily driver.

Hope this helps.


-Ted

[soldave]

Ted - thanks for that. Helps a lot actuallly. As for the cornering, there are no circuits in Okinawa so it will mostly be relatively low speed cornering.

Sorry to be dumb but what's the DTSS? Also, no rear camber adjust bar. There is no way of adjusting the shocks at the back which is why they couldn't really do much with it.

Cheers for the thoughts though; a fair bit for me to think about.