I am gettimg new tires and getting the stang aligned tomorrow. I got these specs from daze.

1. NO more than .25 degrees difference between driver’s side and passenger’s side.

2. +2.0 to +3.5 degrees caster.

3. -.5 to 0 degrees camber. No positive camber, please. There is no problem having a slight variation from driver’s side to passenger’s side to account for the crown in the road.

4. 1/16" to 1/8” toe in

My question is does the "performace" alignment cause exess tire wear. its a daily driver and I drive a lot of freeway and some intown. should I use these specs or stock ones? Thanks in advance.
Kip

 

Don't use the stock specs, your tires will wear on the outside. I'm running like -1 camber with a bunch if + caster and don't have any abnormal wear issues, but part of that is how I drive.

 

I've never run anything like that. Had mine set to stock specs 5 or 6 years ago and am still on the same set of tires that show no wear at all. Isn't the caster supposed to be neg? Thought pos would cause harder steering.

 

Those specs should work just fine for the driving that you have described. A little picky, but the harder you drive the closer to -0.5° you should set the cambers (and a REALLY mild driver might benefit from a smaller negative setting than -0.25°). For lots of harder cornering, I'd look to set camber between -0.5° and maybe -1°, and a little less toe-in (for my hard-cornering self I shoot for 1/32").

You can also set the casters unequal (instead of the cambers) to compensate for road crown. The alignment guy calls this "cross-caster", and that may be a better approach than intentionally setting "cross-camber". The RF caster should be set slightly more positive than the LF.


Norm

 

Negative caster used to be a fairly commondesign feature back in the days of manual steering, bias-ply tires, and lower speed limits. But positive caster is more stable at speed and has a beneficial effect on front tire grip while cornering.

The car will have a slightly more nimble "feel" to itwith alignment specs along the lines of what Daze has suggested.

It's true that steering effort tends to increase slightly, but only a couple of degrees of caster should not make this unmanageable even with manual steering for most people.


Norm

 

The posted alignment specs are perfect for 99.9% of all classic Mustangs.

You'll appreciate morepositive caster as thecar will track better.

Dave

 

that is perfect for handling and minimal tire where. Any negative camber you have more than .5 will increase tire where especially if you have done the shelby drop, but .5 or less will be just fine. as far as caster more will cause tire where if you corner at high speeds and often corner, but under normal driving conditions 2 to 3.5 caster will be just fine.

 

I drive my 67fb with manual steering and 2.5* of positive caster and I think it's just fine. Lots of road feel, and I don't find steering that difficult

 

I'm not sure what my caster is, but my guess is somewhere in the 4-4.5+ range. Not hard to steer, and corners very well, positive road feel but not insane. I should note though that my Richmond locker generates push in turns when I throttle it, which is part of the reason for a more agressive alignment, to compensate for the understeer the rear tires are trying to generate. Again, like with most things automotive, it depends on how the whole thing is set up.

 

Caster will have no affect on tire wear. Only camber and toe will affect that.