I have a stock suspension Evo 2003 (except rear sway bar)
I thought of putting coilovers this year but decided not to, since I am using my car daily on NY roads where it is pretty bad already.
I will probably do about 10 – 15 days of driving schools this year and would like
to improve handling without sacrificing the ride.
Everybody says that a good alignment will improve handling of this car a lot.
Questions I have are

1. What specs should I go with in my case - 10 – 15 days on the track and still lots of
mileage daily. I am willing to sacrifice my tire wear a little but I would hate to
destroy them within a couple of thousand miles. My stock tires will last about 20K. I do have a track setup that I swap on fun weekends.


2. Right now my tires are already worn on the sides – can the alignment be performed on these tires. Will it be OK when I change to new tires?


Last thing – I need to have my car handle well – I would not sleep at night if the car
pulls to any side or is unstable at different speeds.
Are you guys sure this thing can improve it – not make it worse?


Please help with specs suggestions.
Thanks

NY area alignment shop recommendations???

 

First off... get newer tires first, if you want better handling or don't want to lose the already great handling on your Evo. Then get the alignment to the specs that you want. Search for track alignment specs and you should be able to find some good advice for those. I'm going to get an alignment on my Evo, dropped on Hotchkis springs with these specs:

-1.5 camber, L/R fronts, 0 toe
-1.0 camber, L/R rears, 0 toe

These seems to work for some people who wanted to get rid of some understeer without getting too aggressive (track specs) and still be able to drive it everyday without problems. I'm planning to go to some track days this year and hopefully, these specs will be good for me, in general, since most of my driving will be street only.

I've read some Evos came with really messed up alignments from the factory or from shipping. Belle Tire offer free alignment checks, so you could always check them and compare first to see if you need one.

 

I've been running this alignment set-up for 10k miles with no negative tire wear effects:

-1.8 camber, L/R fronts, 0 toe
-1.3 camber, L/R rears, 0 toe

I use the car as my daily driver and occasionally run hard through the canyons, but do not track the car. Handling is great!

 

If you haven't been to a HPDE yet don't change any suspension parts. Get a feel for what you have stock and go from there based off of your needs and driving habits. If anything I would just start out using more negative camber and maybe some of the other recommended toe settings out there for track use.

 

I have about 40-50 days of tack time within last 3 years.
I more or less know the car by now.
Alignment would be great, but I want to make sure the car will still be great in every day driving and not too rough on tires.

Thanks guys- keep it coming.

 

He's not talking about changing suspension parts, just improving the alignment. Stock, the car will understeer far too much on the track. Why waste a set of front tires? Since Greg seems to have significant track experience, I would agree with him that getting the alignment sorted out would be a great step.

Emre

 

Oops, I saw "coilovers" and read it too quickly. My bad.

 

I run
-1.8 degrees camber front with 0 toe
-1.5 degrees Camber rear with 1/32 toe-in

I found that 0f / 0r for toe made it a bit unsettling for me for street driving as it increasing tramlining, and can unsettle the rear badly in emergency situations even if you know it is coming.

 

Can somebody explain "TOE" to me.
How will the car react if it is positive or negative- front or rear??

 

Toe is either 0 or toe in/out. What this refers to is the plane that the tire is in when going straight forward. With a car with 0 toe, it means that when driving straight both tires are pointing exactly straight. Toe in of 1/32 means that when driving straight forward each tire is actually pointing 1/64" away from straight towards the center of your car.

an exaggerated bad graphic for his would be

Left Tire Right Tire
| | ..............| | 0 Toe


/ /..............\ \ Toe- in



\ \............../ / Toe out.


The effect of toe is not generally felt when riving in a straight line, but can radically effect how the car handles in the corner. Because of weight transfer in the corner the outside tire will have more effect on the direction of the car than the inside one. With that in mind the following generally holds true:

In a car with under steer/push, setting the rear toe setting to toe out slightly will cause the rear end to rotate more easily because the tire carrying the higher load of the weight (the outside one) will be tracking a slightly wider arch than the front tires. While this rotation can be a great asset in autocross or road racing, it can be dangerous in a regular driving situation as an emergency swerving maneuver can severely upset the rear of the car, and could cause a spin.

To in has the opposite effect. If the rear of the car is set for toe-in, then when in a hard corner, the rear end will try to track inside of the arc of the front end, causing over steer. While the instability can be just as much, you run less risk of a spin of complete loss of control than with a car that is set to induce slight over steer. This is generally why cars come from the factory set up to have slight under steer.

Toe settings on the front end have a host of effects as well. With 0 to slight toe in generally being the better setting on the street to a mild car. Effects of excessive toe (either in or out) on the front have take away some of the feel the front end transmits to the driver and can also lead to bad tram-lining (following the ruts in the road, or that floating feeling on grooved cement) that can be really disconcerting. If you are looking to track the car, but not get full on into a track/autocross only setup,. I would always recommend running at least a little toe in on the rear.

The other side effect of the toe setting (especially if it is excessive) is increased tire wear.

 

What's a good alignment for street/autocross?

 

the one I listed above worked really well for me last year. with an MR, you might be able to get away with as high as -2.00 neg camber in the front since you ahve the better Centerd and front Diff's than I do.

 

Good info, I will need to do an alignment soon because I tried to be like keiichi tsuchiya on snow

 

Have you tracked the car with these settings? I've found that anything over 0.8 to 1.0 degrees of negative camber at the rear makes the car really hard to rotate cleanly. But I've been driving BMW's for over 15 years, so I'm used to cars that are very throttle sensitive and tend towards oversteer. I'm not comfortable with the typical FWD/AWD driving style of throwing the car into a turn under trailbraking and then just booting the throttle. So I need a set-up that's more neutral, throttle adjustible, and provides some controlable oversteer.

I'm an instructor with several chapters of the BMW CCA, BMW CC, and PCA (among others) so I get an awful lot of track time each year. I've driven the Evo on various challenging circuits and have done a lot of tuning with a bone stock suspension. I find that the settings suggested by most members on this board are highly conservative and very slow. They make the Evo feel like a very powerful FWD car...sort of like an STi. I was very disappointed the first few times I tracked the Evo! By running less negative camber in the rear and even adding a tiny bit of toe out, I was able to make the Evo handle like a nicely set-up RWD car. For me, that's not only much faster, but much more satisfying to drive.

Emre

 

Not to be a dick...but this gets asked a million times a day on this forum but it is not a question that anyone can really answer.

Alignment specs can make a huge difference to the way a car handles (how it turns in, how it balances, how it responds to throttle inputs, etc.). You can turn your car into anything from an understeering pig that plows like an Audi to a twitchy beast that jumps into lurid oversteer with the slightest provocation. It's such a personal thing that no one can really give you a stright answer about what set-up is best: it all depends on what you're comfortable with.

And don't forget, even hardcore track guys like different setting depending on what tracks they drive. If you spend your days at tracks like Watkins Glen, Mosport, and Tremblant with high-speed sweeping corners, you probably want a pretty neutral car. Guys running really high-speed tracks, like Daytona, might even prefer some mild understeer. If you autocross regularly or run tight, twisty, low-speed tracks like Shannonville or you will probably want a considerable amount of oversteer to help you boot the car around the corners. Each of these environments will require very different alignment settings.

Most people on this board drive on the street 99.9% of the time. Also, most people seem to have started off in FWD or AWD and are not comfortable with oversteer at all. If you're one of those people, stick to a conservative setting like the one Kyperion listed. There's a LOT more performance in the car. You can unlock a lot of cornering speed, but you need to be comfortable handling oversteer and you need to have the discipline and track experience to deal with driving a car that's a little unsettled at the rear.

Emre