My car is lowered with the FRP 5300 B springs. I had almost neg 3 degrees of camber.

I don't care who thinks this is wrong or needs to be fixed but it handled like it was on rails.
Autocrossing and some road course laps was serious digging in on tight turns.

The caveat was major tire wear. I would wear out the inside tread in one summer. About 8000km of driving. Did this 3 times until I could not afford to keep buying tires.

Installed a caster/camber adjustable plates. Had the alignment set and they sent me home with neg 0.6 camber. My front tires which are 245 45 17's have worn perfectly even all the way across, not easy for a 45 series.

Lost a bit of cornering, not bad, just not as good as before.

Here is the question of the hour. I'm getting new tires and an alignment tomorrow.
What do you think about dialing in some more neg camber?

 

That's up to you if you want to go back to wearing tires.

 

Well I made a comprimise. Chose Neg 0.90 deg. Not the NASCAR setting from before my adjustable plates but since I plan on doing a big more racing on the road course next year, I chose to lean them in a bit.

 

A lot of it depends on how the suspension is set up, control arm angles etc. There's WAY more to suspension than most people realize, and there's a tremendous amount of physics involved. But generally more neg camber(up to a point) is going to help with high speed cornering, but in normal driving will wear the tires. A well set up suspension can run low neg camber, like -0.5 to -1 and still corner like it's on rails if the suspension is setup to create more neg camber dynamically(most factory suspensions don't do that). Also the lower profile the tire, the less the camber needed due to stiffer sidewalls. What alignment is best for a driver really depends on how they drive the car, how the suspension is set up and what kind of tire wear they're willing to accept.

 

Dial in a little, not 3, though.
Find a nice mean setting that adds rail likeness but does
not eat the tires up so bad.

 

Let's discuss.

Basically my car is a daily driver. It wears a 205 70 15 in the winter and I could care less about the settings during those winter months.

In the summer it's back to 245 45 17 on the front and 275 40 on the rear. Rims are 9".

With the previous -0.6 it seemed like the perfect set up for max tire life but I like racing too. I try to enter 1 or 2 autocross events / year and at least 3 open lapping at the road course. Autocross seems to lean a bit more towards driver skill but the car needs more for road coursing.

What do you think about the -0.9 camber. Should I have leaned them in more?
I've also heard positive caster is good. I have 2.0 now and the plates are all the way over.
My toe is 1/4" in.

 

I meant how suspension functions. Caster, camber and toe are your alignment settings and effect how the car handles, but what's also important are things like roll center, SAI(steering axis inclination, which works with camber to effect your total included angle), scrub radius, ackerman angle, roll couple percentage, sprung vs unsprung weight, anti-squat and so on and so forth.

You can have 2 identical cars that each achieve best handling with totally different alignment settings. As far as alignment effecting handling though there are a few general things to keep in mind. More negative camber will help with cornering but increase tire wear and can also create a car that oversteers whereas more positive camber kills cornering and creates a car that understeers, more positive caster will make the car track straighter and help slightly with cornering(creates a bit more negative camber during turning) but makes the wheel harder to turn(generally not an issue with power steering), and toe in will give better straight line tracking but slight toe out can improve the ackerman angle and give betting steering response on corner turn in but the car doesn't want to track straight so you constantly have to steer the vehicle to go in a straight line(if you let go of the wheel it will tend to wander back and forth slightly).

Simply lowering a car helps in several regards. It lowers the vehicle center of gravity, and also since drops springs are slightly shorter, on dual control arms suspension is pitches the UCA and LCA up slightly which will improve the vehicle's roll center(causes less weight to shift to the outside of the car during cornering) and will also improve the roll couple percentage causing the weight to be better balanced among the tires. Lowering a car and adding larger sway bars can allow you to eliminate nearly all body roll and greatly improve roll center and roll couple percentage but generally makes the ride less comfortable.

What alignment works best really depends on how you drive and how the suspension is set up. Try more neg camber to improve handling until you find a balance of cornering vs tire wear that you find acceptable. Try more positive caster, especially on higher speed road courses. Toe is more of a preference thing, slight toe in if you want more straight line stability, slight toe out of you want better steering response. I prefer to run my toe parallel to balance turn in vs straight line stability.

1/4" toe in is about the max toe in you'd want. Typically 1/16-1/8" is common. I have mine between 0 and 1/64" toe in, so basically parallel.

Keep in mind there's other stuff you can do to make the car handle, such as sway bars and chassis stiffening. A stiff chassis that has well balanced suspension will handle better and be easier to control than if it's unbalanced but you just try and align the crap out of it.

 

There is a range from ford for camber settings that alignment shops refer to as factory alignment specs. The range is +0.1ish to -1.3 degrees of camber so your 0.3 is pretty conservative. with an eibach pro kit my alignment shop set my camber to -1.5 degrees which maxed out my adjustment. I have camber bolts not caster/camber plates. Tire wear seems fairly normal and even when compared to rear tires (although my rear end breaks loose often ).

If your only looking to go fast straight remember more camber from 0 degrees will slow the car due to increased traction.

Hope this helps

 

Well basically I was more concerned with the adjustment I have control over during a typical alignment.

I went for big more tire wear. I'll need to hit a roadcourse to see how much this helps. On the street it's hard for me to feel the change from -0.60 to -0.90. Especially since I've did a tire change too. Kumhos to Continentals..

I just looked over my alignment sheet again.
My toe was not 1/4", it was 0.25 deg toe in. Do you think that's too much?

 

.25* is only around 1/16-1/8 toe in, which is fine. You can try it at parallel or with a slight toe out to see what you like. I prefer something close to parallel or a slight toe in to help with stability at speed without compromising the Ackerman angle and reducing turn in.