You're not alone. I had my car laser aligned by robi 4 months ago, supposedly neutral with about -3.5 on fronts and -1.1 on rears. I was told I had maybe 1mm of toe on the front and zero on the rears. I left his shop veering off a straight line. I told him about it and he said that he would come out to Santa Monica to check it out, but never did. I hit the track and over the next 4 track events, I DESTROYED the inside right front tires for a total of about 2k worth of tires. I emailed him and he said it was my driving style and that I really had NO toe on my front. I had it checked out and I had almost a 1/2 inch of toe out. I have since had it realigned and have had not a single problem since. Frustrating.

I could also talk about my KW coilovers, but that's another situation.

 

Happy with my alignment from Robi, car drives totally straight and under hard braking the car is very stable. I have almost 3000 miles on the setup with the stock advans, 5700 miles on the car and tire wear is normal.

 

What is wrong with them? That's a spendy item and to not be happy with them would suck.

 

Im guessing the toe wandered a little bit. I would assume if you hit anything too hard it can mess up an alignment pretty quick.

 

ok, take a deep breath ... better? I had my alignment done by Robi same time as Eric, and I did fiddle with it myself a bit afterwards as well. Bottom line - your alignment needs to match

(1) the intended use for the car,
(2) your skill/style as a driver,
(3) the balance of aero forces on the car
(4) the tires you are driving (size & type)
(5) the finanical pain of replacing tires you can put up with

I told Robi I weekend track my car, it's my daily driver, and I can live with replacing a set of tires ones a year. He set it up with -2 camber / toe out in front, and ~ -1.6 camber / toe out in the rear.

Negative camber gives you a larger contact patch while turning hard. If a car has a lot of negative camber but is never driven hard through turns, the tires will wear uneven and scrub of the inside edge first. Since I corner hard a lot, this hasn't been an issue for me. Changing camber this way increases overall cornering grip.

Toe out in front gives you sharper turn-in response, toe out in rear makes the rear break loose under trail braking (entering into a turn). Since the Evo is AWD, almost all the mods robi does are aimed at increasing corner grip in the front, and *decreasing* grip in the rear. The idea is to push the car's balance to neutral or oversteer, rather than the stock-type / insurance safe understeer. That's also the reason he puts very beefy rear sway bars on the car. Non-zero toe - especially in combination with high negative camber - will wear your tires very quickly. You have to pay to play.

Running on 275/35/18 Toyo T1-R tires, the toe-out in front made the car too twitchy for my taste as a daily driver - it was great on the track in tight corners, but tracked grooved pavement on the freeway more than I was willing to put up with. I set my front toe back to zero, lost some turn-in and got the car less twitchy on the freeway - life is a compromise.

After changing tires from the T1-Rs (which have a very soft sidewall and sucked in tight turns) to Advan Neovas the balance of the car completely shifted. The much stiffer Neovas got me much sharper turn-in, and thus more front cornering grip. Some of you where present at my first auo-x after the tire swap and had the pleasure of watching me spin-out 4 times. I now had a car with handling balanced on a knife-edge that exceeded my abilities as a driver.

After getting used to the car's tail happiness (oversteer) in tight auto-x corners (caused in part by the rear toe out) and learning to apply brakes more delicately and use the throttle when the car starts to fish-tail, I'm now able to pull off one glorious power slide after another when apexing in a tight turn. My skills have caught up with the handling of the car.

With auto-x / slower speed back country roads sorted, I took the car to the big track (Pacific Raceway). In slow-speed tight hairpins, the twitchy rear is great. On the long sweeper following the front straight away it scared me ****less. So I increased the aerodynamic downforce on the rear by adding a gurney flap. Problem solved - now I got high speed stability, and slow speed tight cornering.

Bottom line, there is no "right alignment" for the evo, there is only a right alignment for a given car/tires/driver/track at a given time. And yes, rear toe-out has it's uses - it works *very* well for me. Robi did his job by listening to what I told him, making a best guess towards my driving abilities and setting up the car to give me a baseline around which to tweak it. There's no way he (or anybody else) can give you the "perfect" setup after a 15 min conversation, unless you are very experienced and effective at communicating your needs. And your needs will change over time as well. So figure out what you want / need for your specific case, get a base setup, and go tweak your knobs (tires, alignment, aero, driving style) until it's perfect for *you*.





BTW -the Evo has a McPhearson strut suspension in front, and multi-link rear.

 

But.............the bottom line is even Eric didn't get the alignment he requested. Regardless of intended driving style, his request was not met. *shrug*

 

aggresive driving will knock the car out of alignment over time and should always be checked frequently. this includes launching the car and just plain driving like the car should be not babied. so i think that some of this is due to time spent driving. my car was nto in good shape after a hard 5k miles on it and neede to be done again.


nature of the evo puts a smile on your face all the time

 

I totally agree with what you are talking about. However you will agree that there are a lot of EVO owners out there with high HP cars that don't know the first thing about taking a corner.

Since I am a certified driving instructor, I've seen a lot in my 8 years on the track.
IMHO, unless you have considerable track time & understand the fundamentals of car dynamics. YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE REAR TOE OUT!

Again IMHO, NEVER, NEVER on a street car. 0 toe is great of maybe even 1/16 tow out.
In a panic stop or emergency maneuvers, it can be more of a determent.

Stock the EVO has better turn in then my old track M3! That car had about $12k worth of suspension goodies. Really the car doesn't need help with turn in, what it needs is more stable mid corner, and a little less understeer. My EVO is running stock
suspension & alignment.

501, where are you driving? The car should not fall out of alignment that quickly! Most of the time, the alignment changes due to bushing & joint wear. If it's loosing the alignment setting, your alignment guy sucks. You should get at least 15kmi out of a alignment.

 

I beg to differ. All it takes is one night at a drag strip making HARD launches and you need to recheck your alignment because it will be off. It is not physically possible to get the cams tight enough to keep it from happening. I am not talking alot of change but on my own car it has changed .05* total after one night at the track.

Road conditions (such as most of I5) are rough enough that one or two good potholes, high G manuevers, etc. can help to alter alignment settings. Stock bushings dont help things either. I would think that any event (Drag, AutoX, Circuit, etc.) of sticky tires and what we will call spirited driving is enough to warrant at least an alignment check if not another alignment.

 

Your saying that one night of drag racing & the alignment changes enough to get it realigned? That's crazy! Hopefully my EVO keeps it's settings longer. This is the first thing I have heard of the EVO loosing it's settings so quickly.

Grated, I do not drag race or launch the car hard. But my car just tipped 20kmi & my
alignment is still in good shape.

Trust me I know all about the crappy I5 stuff, I bent 2 rims on my Audi when they had the Death lips around 320th in Federal Way, I just loved the lack of any signage.

That really sucks that you have to get the car aligned so much. Mine was done at 10kmi when I added some braces & it's been fine ever since. I have never had or known of any car that looses it's alignment that quickly. I've had a couple of 100 mph plus off road excursions in other cars & the alignment did not change.

What changed .05? camber, caster toe, side to side? Are you stock engine & suspension? I can see if you have stock suspension & 450+hp.
Are you the exception or the rule here? I do know hard launches are quite violent in the EVO, can it be the bushings being settled, or torqued by the launch? That's changing the settings?

A few of use rented Spokane a few weeks ago, so maybe I'll try & have my guy check the car out & see if the settings changed.

 

EvoIIIM3- First of all it was rear toe that changed which I am not too surprised about. I am on H&R coilovers and am running really low 12's leaving at 6300 rpm. My launches are kinda violent as even with 275's I spin coming out of the hole. I also do alignments for a living so all I have to do is show up early to work and spend a 1/2 hour or so. Part of my pre-race prep whether road or drag is to align the car and have specs to compare with after I align it again. I dont have any problems with it changing just through normal driving though, it is fine every time I check it (once a month when not racing).

It altered to something like -.10L .00R instead of -.05L&R. I dont remember to be honest what it was after my less check. I only keep my printouts long enough to compare then toss.

 

So your not stock. Your spinning 275's all round? Yea, that's a little bit much.
Time for some drag radials? I wanted to add that a few runs in the 1/4mi, is much
more wear & tear on the running gear (trans, clutch, drive-train, etc) then a day on the road course.

Anyway, since it's the rear toe & your dragging, why not go 0 in the rear, it might help you hook up, & help keep the settings.

I would bet you are torquing the rubber bushings so much they are binding, and that
what might be changing the settings.

IMHO, In a road corse car, this should never happen, if you can't trust your suspension, the car should stay off the track.

 

i should have clarified that the toe was changing quickly not the total set up. thats why i was saying that hard driving can cause that.

i know holyshiznits driving style and is new to the awd platform some small learning curves to get over, the same as i had too.

but all in all i believe its not the robi-spec set up cause of the radical difference between all wheels with the toe. my evo had the same problem when i had it checked out, and my previous alignment guy sucked

and the evo can launch hard which shocks the **** out of everything

 

Which Tire Factory? I took my truck to Kirkland Tire Factory for a new set of rubber (driving on wear bar indicators in the snow isn't "traction"). They got delivered the wrong set of tires (we were looking at DM-Z3's but they got shipped to them DM-Z2's and they didn't even confirm that they were correct before installing). They also installed only 1 of 4 valve stem caps. I was a little annoyed so I went back and let them understand my feelings. They were happy to work with me on these issues, but still... Apparently they've done an EVO or two in the past. Don't know how satisfied the customers were, though.

I've taken my EVO to Discount Tire (racing friend's recommendation) and they just could not balance the tires after like 5 or more attempts, so I'm not inclined to return. Performance Tire (in San Diego) set me up right the first time, every time. Who do I "trust" my EVO to for tires in the East Side area of SeaTac?

 

^^^ I ONLY work with the Tire Factory on 6th and Filmore in Eugene. Everyone else is a bunch of jokers.