alignment question naed your help

[EazyBreazy]

im putting all of my adjustable rods in and have a few questions.

herre's what i know i want.front 0 degrees toe1.5-1.9 degrees camber???????? castor (factory??)

rear0 degrees toe 1.5 degrees camber

s14 is lowered on kts17x9+15-235/40-17'sstock base sway bar in front, none in rear. (tanabe d spec in the room f&r)

car will be used for autox, track, and drift when my collarbone heals. is driven extreemely hard daily ie offramps canyon roadscritique,suggest

[94_240sx]

I've been checking your post often, but no one's responding. I also need to get alignment done soon. These links might help you.

http://www.240edge.com/perform....html

http://www.240edge.com/performance/tuning-toe.html

[EazyBreazy]

yeah i figured dean aka naed240 would have stopped in by now. he may be on the way to nopi

[naed240sx]

im putting all of my adjustable rods in and have a few questions.

herre's what i know i want.front 0 degrees toe1.5-1.9 degrees camber???????? castor (factory??)

rear0 degrees toe 1.5 degrees camber

s14 is lowered on kts17x9+15-235/40-17'sstock base sway bar in front, none in rear. (tanabe d spec in the room f&r)

car will be used for autox, track, and drift when my collarbone heals. is driven extreemely hard daily ie offramps canyon roadscritique,suggest

So basically you are looking for a grip setup?

First of all, keep in mind that I have never tested my car on a skidpad, so anything I say might not be technically the best setting, and remember that the ideal alignment settings for different cars are going to be different. Swaybars, differential, preload, and damper settings all play a large roll in how you want to set up your alignment.

My number 1 suggestion: Get an alignment plan at a local shop (1 payment that allows you to come in as often as you like for X amount of time). I have a 3 year plan from NTB that cost me like 150 dollars. I have had 15+ alignments done in the period of 14 months. Alignment plans rock because you can change your ride height or play with castor/camber often to find out what you like best. I have run a ton of different settings over this period of time.

My current setup:

Kts coils

Rear whiteline swaybar

Modified front swaybar to increase stiffness and eliminate binding/missalignment that ocurrs when lowering and increasing castor. (you can also buy pillowball swaybar mounts to fix this issue, but I am cheap and poor)

s15 helical differential

Rucas, tension rods.

Hankook RS2's, 235/40s all around

-2 front camber, -1.6 rear camber, stock toe all around, 8.2 castor (stock castor is around 7 degrees on s13, not sure about s14, but I think it is the same. When you lower your car, the castor increases (My castor was 7.5 degrees with stock tension rods). I got the spl rods, and now I am running 8.2.

I like the way my car handles ALOT. It is very difficult to make it understeer, feels very neutral when pushed through a corner, and when it does oversteer, it is very easy to control, and extremely brief as long as you ease off the throttle. It has massively good turn in and front grip, and you can literally feel how hard you can push without loosing grip.

Advice:

Sport compact car was running -2.5 front camber and -1.5 rear when they made their 1g lateral grip mark on a skidpad. These camber numbers are probably fairly close to the ideal numbers for Azenis or similar tires (hankook RS2 or kumho MX), at a given castor setting. With more castor, you run can less static camber, and but end up with the same amount of camber at turn in as a car with less castor and more static camber. I don't know what their castor settings were, so knowing their camber settings is in effect kind of worthless.

I would start out running the same camber settings as me. Definately don't run less than -2 front camber if you are looking for good grip. The bump in castor definately helped as well (I'm assuming you know what castor is and does for macpherson style suspension). I can't comment on toe because I have not experimented with anything but stock toe settings. But as I said earlier, these are just guidelines, and can be adjusted as needed to lessen understeer or oversteer or beneifit the handling of the car in some desireable way.

In addition, when are you getting a differential? There is absolutely no point in having coilovers and good tires without a good differential. To be completely honest, my helical differential made as much difference in the handling and grippiness of my car as my coils and tires.

Bottom line: All of this is no more that simple suggestions and starting points. Experimentation and adaptation to your specific setup is far more important than anything that I tell you.

Modified by naed240sx at 3:53 PM 9/15/2006
Modified by naed240sx at 3:57 PM 9/15/2006

[naed240sx]

And LOL at expecting me to answer all threads in this forum within the hour.

Keep in mind that I check my email far more often than wheels/tires forum, so if anybody has any questions that need a quick answer, email me telling me to answer your post in this forum, and I'll come right over and do so. I do prefer to answer legit questions via this forum though, so don't ask me questions in the email, because I would rather post answers on this forum where the info is publicly available.

[EazyBreazy]

lol it took you like 16 hours man. this alignment will be the only one i get from this place, as im moving from ca to ms. 3 yr deal wouldn't help me much here, i will look into it in ms.

getting a diff for myself in november (b-day present) kazz 2 way, as i will be doing alot of drifting there (no mountain roads).

i wasnt to far off for my camber, rear toe in willl create more straight line stability under acceleration.(can also create some understeer under acceleration out of a turn). toe out will causes it to be squirly under acceleration. i want a really neutral fellling car

[naed240sx]

i want a really neutral fellling car

I think everybody does. But as I said, there really is no holy grail of alignments. You are more than likely gonna be dealing with some oversteer problems considering the fact that you will be running an aftermarket rear swaybar and stock front. What size is the rear bar you are getting, and is it hollow or solid?. Before I had the helical differential in, my car was definately a little too tail happy. The kaaz diff will probably make it slightly more neutral, but won't help as much as a helical in that regard.

[EazyBreazy]

rear is not on yet, but i have both front and rear tanabe drift spec sways, kinda wish i would have gotten the whitelines, but i already have these, i still gotta get the end links so i can put them on

[naed240sx]

rear is not on yet, but i have both front and rear tanabe drift spec sways, kinda wish i would have gotten the whitelines, but i already have these, i still gotta get the end links so i can put them on

ohh cool. So they are pretty thick bars huh? I find the effective wheel rate with 8/6 springs and swaybars to be too much for maximum grip on the street. This is why I am running my rear whiteline on full soft, and is the reason why I want to get softer springs before getting a front swaybar.

7/5 QA1 or eibach springs will probably be making their way onto my kts by next summer.

[EazyBreazy]

yeah i think it was you that i was gonna get swap springs with, but i ran out of time. time will tell if my setup will be too much or not. i do know it will be lots of fun on those rainy mississippi nights

[nismofly]

actually after you did that we found out you cant order 7/5 on them, you have to buy them seperately regardless...this is why my car has 8/6 springs on right now

anyway the only reason youd have to run anything else camber wise would be clearance, like dean said increasing castor allows you to reduce static camber

i need multi link...bad

[EazyBreazy]

hey dean it looks like i will be getting a diff alot sooner. im going to be picking up an r32 gtr diff next week for 350. from everything i've read, its a 2 way mechanical diff.

[nismofly]

you getting the front diff or something?

the rears an r230, the fronts an r200 but i wouldnt think it would work in the rear? iono

lots of people swap in R32 GTS-T diffs, theyre r200's with VLSD and theyve got 4.36 gear ratio

[EazyBreazy]

no the rear one, it is supposed to be a clutch type 2 way diff on the gtr's only

zerothread/194980

[nismofly]

i couldve sworn the rears were r230's...

maybe its r180 front and r200 rear

i guess youll find out

[naed240sx]

Ummmm, yeah, this ain't gonna fit an s14.

[EazyBreazy]

which diff is that? i'll go take pictures of the pumpkin tomorrow, as i didnt even look....ehh....maybe i'm not getting a diff that soon, we'll see

[naed240sx]

which diff is that? i'll go take pictures of the pumpkin tomorrow, as i didnt even look....ehh....maybe i'm not getting a diff that soon, we'll see

That pic came from the thread you linked me to.

BTW, used oem clutch diff sounds hooptie.

[EazyBreazy]

bla, your prolly right, but i want it. i may have to wait though because my r rear wheel bearing is f'ed up. has play in it and all, so im gonna have to replace that. im getting an alignment tomorrow, maybe that will help with my *** end feeling like its floating. this shi7 feels wierd.

[EazyBreazy]

took my car to the alignment shop, its pretty comforting when you get there, there is already another s14 on the rack w/ all adjustable rods. and on top of that, the guy at the desk knew what kind of car i had, guessed what would be adjustable. hopefully they can match my specks on the dot.

i went with 2.3 front camber1.7 rear camber castor at 8.20 toe in the front, stock toe in the rear. prolly like 1 degree or so

[nismofly]

thats an r230 rear end like i thought, GT-R's have a 200 in front and 230 rear, GTS-T's have just the 200 rear that bolts in...they also have the stronger 5x1 instead of 3x2 axles

those look like pretty good settings, if anything your front camber is a little too much, but its fine...im running 2.2 front and 2 rear right now

[EazyBreazy]

yeah i just need to fix this bearing carrier on my right rear before i can do any real driving to see how i like it. i would also like to get to a real skid pad to see what it'll do. but thats gonna be after i put the sway bars in

[koukicody]

hey sdwyz, if your intrested in another shop Hiro's auto in costa mesa is great. a little far from san diego, but might be worth the trip seeing as they do all the suspension tuning for RS*R's drift cars and have all the high tech stuff and lots of know how!