1G Help on 1G Alignment settings

[Caithness]

My friend and I both need alignments and I need advice on what settings to specify. Neither of us is going to fiddle with suspension settings once the cars are aligned so these have to be set-it-and-forget-it compromise settings for the street and track.

My car will have this setup when it's aligned-
FD RX-7 rims 16x8, 225/50/16 Hankook Ventus RS-2, 1/8" spacers front, 1/4" spacers rear, ST rear sway bar, H&R Sport springs (1" drop), KYB GR-2 shocks, welded rear active toe (eliminated), Ingall's eccentric bolts for front camber adjustment, and only if completely necessary the Ingall's rear control arms ($$$).
I use my car mostly for street driving, but I plan on starting to autocross next spring, probably once every two months or so. I frequently corner hard in the course of street driving.

His car has this setup now-
Stock 16x6 wheels, 215/55/16 Falken Ziex 512, unknown springs 2" drop/KYB GR-2 shocks (came with the car), Ingall's rear upper control arms for camber adjustment.
He doesn't have any plans to autocross the car. His focus is on drag racing (the car will be running a 61mm turbo within a few weeks) and high speed driving on the interstate, with most cornering being interstate ramps at 70+ mph.

Everything I've read is for 2gs so I'm almost completely in the dark on what settings a 1g needs. I've read Tire Rack's alignment guide and jtmcinder's alignment guides for 2gs and come up with these settings for myself-
Camber:
-1.5 up front- going to have to buy ingalls camber bolts, a bit of deviation for cross-camber
-.75 to -1.0 in back- may have to get the rear control arms to get it to this

Toe:
Front Just a stitch of toe out, .0x"
Rear 0 or a very small amount of toe in

Caster:
+2.8- factory max spec, a bit of deviation for cross-caster

For my friend's car:
-.5 camber up front
-.5 camber in back? One old thread said factory spec is -1.55?<-(confusing)

Toe:
Front stitch of toe out, .0x"
small amount of toe in until he welds his trailing links, say .125"? If he ever welds them, then a very small amount toe in

Caster +2.8- according to Tire Rack there is no downside to more caster

Do these numbers look good? All the help I can get is appreciated- as much as I love a nice-handling car, I've never really spent much time reading up on suspension settings until recently.

 

[WatchItExplode]

Tire wear wasn't a concern for me, so I set my front camber plates as negative as they would go before the allignment. I ended up only getting about 1.8 degrees on one side, a little less on the other. I was aiming for 2 degrees but I guess I'll need coilovers before I can get that much adjustment.

Note: I have the RRE camber plates. For the little amount of adjustment you get out of them with stock diameter springs, I don't think they're quite worth $290. You're probably better off with good old fashion bolts, but I'd get as far negative as you possibly can.

 

[Caithness]

I guess the reason my search didn't bring up much 1g aligment info was that there weren't many 1g people in here to provide such info in the first place . I cribbed these settings from the dsm autox site, but there's no way I'm going this radical with the camber or toe:
# 2.5deg front camber, from the lower bolt hole on the strut.
# 1/8" toe out front
# 1 deg rear camber, 1/32 toe out rear.

I suppose I'm just going to stick to my original settings, maybe change them up a bit; -1.5 degrees front is as far as I want to go because I do care about tire wear, but I might run a bit more on the right for cross camber instead of running less on the left. I'm sticking to my guns on toe because I'm not willing to sacrifice tire life and high-speed stability for turn in, which seems to be the trade off. And I'm starting to think that there isn't any stock adjustment for caster- I need to find my DSM CD to make sure, but I haven't seen any such adjustment down there. So whatever I get is whatever I get until I upgrade to Koni/GC and the RRE plates.

I still need to hit up the DSM AutoX Yahoo Group- I remember finding some good info there in the past, then totally forgetting about it until the other day. I'd still like some input from people here, if anybody has any.

Tire wear wasn't a concern for me, so I set my front camber plates as negative as they would go before the allignment. I ended up only getting about 1.8 degrees on one side, a little less on the other. I was aiming for 2 degrees but I guess I'll need coilovers before I can get that much adjustment.

Note: I have the RRE camber plates. For the little amount of adjustment you get out of them with stock diameter springs, I don't think they're quite worth $290. You're probably better off with good old fashion bolts, but I'd get as far negative as you possibly can.

So has your tire wear been affected by the extra camber? What did you go with for caster?

 

[screamineagle]

I guess the reason my search didn't bring up much 1g aligment info was that there weren't many 1g people in here to provide such info in the first place . I cribbed these settings from the dsm autox site, but there's no way I'm going this radical with the camber or toe:
# 2.5deg front camber, from the lower bolt hole on the strut.
# 1/8" toe out front
# 1 deg rear camber, 1/32 toe out rear.

I suppose I'm just going to stick to my original settings, maybe change them up a bit; -1.5 degrees front is as far as I want to go because I do care about tire wear, but I might run a bit more on the right for cross camber instead of running less on the left. I'm sticking to my guns on toe because I'm not willing to sacrifice tire life and high-speed stability for turn in, which seems to be the trade off. And I'm starting to think that there isn't any stock adjustment for caster- I need to find my DSM CD to make sure, but I haven't seen any such adjustment down there. So whatever I get is whatever I get until I upgrade to Koni/GC and the RRE plates.

I still need to hit up the DSM AutoX Yahoo Group- I remember finding some good info there in the past, then totally forgetting about it until the other day. I'd still like some input from people here, if anybody has any.



So has your tire wear been affected by the extra camber? What did you go with for caster?

1g caster is not adjustable

 

[jtmcinder]

You'll want more front camber. (I've tried to autocross 1Gs with 1.5* or less and it's very painful.) 1Gs have a lousy bump-camber curve, so you need even more static front camber than a 2G. And don't worry about tire-wear from this. The front of the car weighs so much, as long as you keep the toe near zero, the tires will be fine.

I wouldn't run zero rear toe on a street-driven car with stock bushings. The tram-lining will get really annoying.

- Jtoby

 

[Caithness]

Thanks for the input. I think I've settled on around -2.0* Camber Front, -1.0* Rear, and 1/32" Toe-Out Front and Rear. For my friend, just whatever negative camber he can get from play in the strut-spindle bolts unless he gets the Ingalls bolts. Then -1.5* front and -.5* rear, 1/32" Toe-Out all around, though I'm not sure how that stupid active toe affects it.

Oh, and I'm an idiot for asking about caster adjustment. 1, yeah, there isn't a stock adjustment, 2, as a friend pointed out there's no way you can adjust caster and camber with the same plate- I finally figured out that the RRE plates have built in extra caster by alt-tabbing between the pictures of the two quickly. I couldn't figure out the difference until I did that.

 

[Elvenhome21]

I got 5 degrees out of my struts, drill the mounting holes (on the strut) out to 1/2 and elongate them a little. It wasn't that hard to go from track to street setup (only took 15 mins to re-adjust toe)

 

[pneumo]

It sounds like you're on the right track. The only change I'd recomend for your friend is to set the rear toe slightly in, about .125" The rear active toe link will toe-out slightly during a hard launch.

Driving with toe out on the street makes the car wander a little more. I tried it for a while and didn't like it. I couldn't relax on the freeway, I was always correcting slightly. With zero toe in front and .125" toe-in rear the car tracks dead straight.

 

[jtmcinder]

I agree with the above. I would only run rear toe-out on a dedicated autocrosser. A street-driven car wants some rear toe-in, especially if you drive on the highway or let other people borrow the car.

Yes, rear toe-out helps rotate the car when it's being driven hard (since it causes the inside rear to drag), but it's a serious commitment to racing over street-driving. And what about the odd trip to the drag strip? I did a few 100+ mph runs with some rear toe-out and it was a white-knuckle experience, to say the least.

- Jtoby