Alignment guru's advice wanted.
- Thread starter Dazz84z
- Start date
Does the place use Hunter alignment equipment? If so then your cars best settings will be stored in that machine for them to use. By best I should say factory settings. If you plan on tracking the car then other settings can be used / in fact even if you lower the car you can optimise the toe and camber settings. If you do a search through my posts for "hunter" you will see a thread with some great feedback on from the alignment gurus on here and is what I went went shortly after fitting Eibach springs
My advice is as follows....
Front suspension:
- Pull the "pins" in the strut plates
- Max out Camber on both sides (they will not be even... one will have more negative camber than the other)
- Set both sides to the "lesser" side (ex: my right was maxed at -1.2, while my left got -1.8....so both sides were set to -1.2... do not exceed -2.0)
- Set toe to either zero or slightly toed in
Rear suspension:
- Set Camber to "maximum attainable" or -2.0 degrees (whichever is the lesser.... do not exceed -2.0)
- Set toe to either zero or slightly toed out
This makes for a really fun driving car (I don't know how it will work on the "UK" roads). I run it on my wife's E46. I run very similar on my Z4, except I modified the front strut slots to get -2.0 front (which is more than can be obtained with the factory crash slots).
As long as you do not exceed -2.0 of Camber, tire wear is not usually an issue. Toe in (front and rear) seem to make the car feel more "stable" while toe out seems makes the car respond faster.
Front suspension:
- Pull the "pins" in the strut plates
- Max out Camber on both sides (they will not be even... one will have more negative camber than the other)
- Set both sides to the "lesser" side (ex: my right was maxed at -1.2, while my left got -1.8....so both sides were set to -1.2... do not exceed -2.0)
- Set toe to either zero or slightly toed in
Rear suspension:
- Set Camber to "maximum attainable" or -2.0 degrees (whichever is the lesser.... do not exceed -2.0)
- Set toe to either zero or slightly toed out
This makes for a really fun driving car (I don't know how it will work on the "UK" roads). I run it on my wife's E46. I run very similar on my Z4, except I modified the front strut slots to get -2.0 front (which is more than can be obtained with the factory crash slots).
As long as you do not exceed -2.0 of Camber, tire wear is not usually an issue. Toe in (front and rear) seem to make the car feel more "stable" while toe out seems makes the car respond faster.
v8z4 said:
Thanks for the advice but what I cam gather zero toe or toe out in the rear on uk roads would be asking for trouble. Maybe fun on a track. Also extra camber up front could increase tramlining. I'm after just a road setting that's maybe an improvement over the stock settings.
The roads must really SUCK over there. 
I just got done reading another thread about someone asking about front control arm bushings and everyone is saying the roads are too bad for poly. I run a spherical bearing (mono ball) on my Z's front control arm (actually mono balls on all points) and poly on my wife's E46.
I just got done reading another thread about someone asking about front control arm bushings and everyone is saying the roads are too bad for poly. I run a spherical bearing (mono ball) on my Z's front control arm (actually mono balls on all points) and poly on my wife's E46.
Well got the hunter alignment done. Ended up with the following settings. Didn't feel brave enough to try 0 toe on the road so went with stock toe setting and a slightly reduced rear camber as the cars lower and stiffer than stock.
Left Front camber 1.00 Right front camber 1.00
Left Front toe 0.07 Right front toe 0.07
Left Rear camber 1.48 Right Rear camber 1.48
Left Rear toe L 0.11 Right Rear toe R 0.11
Thrust angle 0.00
First impressions are good. The car feels A lot more stable at high speed and requires no constant adjustment to keep it going straight
The before figures were.
Left Front camber 0.58 Right Front camber 1.09
Left Front toe 0.03 Right Front toe 0.05
Left Rear camber 2.20 Right Rear camber 2.00
Left Rear toe 0.19 Right Rear toe 0.17
Left Front camber 1.00 Right front camber 1.00
Left Front toe 0.07 Right front toe 0.07
Left Rear camber 1.48 Right Rear camber 1.48
Left Rear toe L 0.11 Right Rear toe R 0.11
Thrust angle 0.00
First impressions are good. The car feels A lot more stable at high speed and requires no constant adjustment to keep it going straight
The before figures were.
Left Front camber 0.58 Right Front camber 1.09
Left Front toe 0.03 Right Front toe 0.05
Left Rear camber 2.20 Right Rear camber 2.00
Left Rear toe 0.19 Right Rear toe 0.17