My alignment, for sake of discussion

Red Voodoo

So, disclosure first: I like to think I'm a car enthusiast, but once I start down the modification rabbit hole, I usually discover that I don't know as much as I like to think I do. That being said, please bear with my limited knowledge of the topic, much of what I picked up while snooping through various online "resources".

I had lowering springs installed, waited a few weeks for things to settle, and then had an alignment performed (see Fig. 1). The objective was to get a baseline of how close (or far) the car was to OE alignment specs. Overall, it wasn't terrible, but the resulting adjusted camber for the rear was a bit more negative than I expected with the Swift Spec-R's.

Since the unadjusted camber up front was even at -1.8*, and having some negative camber in the front wheels is seen as beneficial, I decided to take the wait-and-see approach before I invested into adjustable front arms. With the fronts at where they are at, I figured I'd add some positive camber to the rear wheels (to about -1.5*) with adjustable camber arms and toe bolts and keep the camber within .3* between the front and rear.

Then I thought about toe. What was dialed in at the shop seemed to be a little extreme, but well within spec. I see some of you run neutral toe all around, or 0* up front with a tad toe-in in the rear. I understand that poorly adjusted toe is a killer on tires, even more so than a lot of camber. It can also lead to twitchy steering on highways or snap oversteer in fast turns. I was thinking of going with neutral toe up front and .04* toe-in for the rear wheels. Would these adjustments result in decent handling on the street, or an unpredictable mess that would be tiresome to manage on a long highway drive?

Finally, I am also considering going with a square tire set-up for my Sport Rays, using a 275-width tire all around. I do not care for how the car has typically plowed through the corners, so I've read that this would be one way to help make the handling more neutral. I'm not sure if this would need to be factored in when considering an alignment, but I thought I would mention it.

I will add that the car will not be used for track or auto-x events.

I would love to hear the thoughts of those who spend a lot more time fine-tuning their suspensions and handling aspects and have experience with different settings.






Fig. 1: Alignment measurements, before and after

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