Need Alignment After Camber Adjustment?

I've always read that you should get a four-wheel alignment performed
if you make major changes to suspension geometry, such as lowering your
car. I am planning on buying camber adjusters for my front wheels; they
replace the damper pinch bolts on the MacPhersons. The maximum negative
camber I can set is 1.75 degrees, which I will be doing.

Is that going to require an alignment? I'm wondering if changing camber
values has an effect on your toe. Alignment service is expensive, and
my budget is tight.

And hopefully, having some negative camber up front will help with the
understeer...

 

Abso-frickin-lutely will it affect your alignment, and too much negative
camber will eat the insides off your tires.

Get the alignment done, or, spend tons and tons on tire replacements.

Spdloader

 

Macpherson struts do not have damper pinch bolts.

Why on earth you would want to mess with your camber I cannot imagine.

You racing this thing?

Well, yeah.

Yes it does, since you have positive caster.

Then don't mess with it. ANY alteration of some aspects of your geometry
will require verification of the other ones.

You have it quite backwards here, which clearly indicates your
misunderstanding of the issues at hand. Understeer is a product of your
REAR suspension setup. Since you initially mentioned a "pinch bolt",
this suggests a pre-Macpherson vehicle (pre-'00), and thus one with an
independent rear suspension. Rear toe on such cars is positive, and rear
camber is negative. Honda wished to bestow directional stability on
users of the public road who may not have the sort of training F1
drivers have.

Should you be stupid enough to want to reduce understeer on a road car,
all you need to do is make your rear toe zero, which is easily done
without the installation of new parts. What will then result is highly
entertaining behavior in turns. You insurance company may notlike it,
and neither will you once you find out what it will cost you...

 

what kind of car? if it's a taurus, you're wasting your time. in my
highly biased opinion, if you have mcphersons, you're wasting your time.
if you're talking integra, you don't have mcphersons.

replacing the damper pinch bolts? what kind of car?

alignment? what kind of car?

understeer? what kind of car?

 

TeGGeR®,

I have the 2006 Civic Si Coupe, with MacPhersons up front and
independent double wishbone in the back. The Helms OEM service manual
specifies them as "damper pinch bolts", but maybe we are talking about
two different things.

While this car is not being prepped for autocross, I live in an area
with long, curvaceous roads with above-average speed limits. I enjoy
driving my cars fast and hard, somewhat dangling on the border of
recklessness.

I understand that a car with understeer is more predictable and
intuitive than a car with oversteer/neutral steering capability, which
is why most production cars understeer by default. However, I'd like to
achieve neutral-ness and then force myself to adapt, as an experiment
of my driving technique/vehicle capability.

Saying that understeer is a product of the rear suspension setup is
only a half-truth. The rear has more of an effect than the front. The
Si comes stock with a 1.5 LSD up front and about two degrees negative
camber on the rear... and even with an aftermarket 28mm rear swaybar, I
can still detect mild understeer. Increasing negative camber on the
front WILL decrease understeer: as the car corners, the stroke of the
suspension brings the outside wheel camber to zero, widening the tire
contact patch and increasing traction. This is a step I am taking only
because my other upgrades were not sufficient, but such is the way of a
FF car.

However, I am interested in this method of manipulating rear toe to
achieve oversteer. I believe I can mess with it easily enough if its
the thread-type adjustment, but I have no way of measuring the changes.
Can you elaborate, or is this something I shouldn't try to do myself?

 

You certainly seem to have an abundance of suspension knowledge. Why ask
here? Just do what you so obviously know already.

 

I am far from being a suspension guru, so excuse my ignorance. Why am I
wasting my time putting negative camber on MacPhersons? I have read
that they are inferior to double-wishbones, purely as a matter of being
able to control suspension compliance. Are MacPhersons inherently less
adjustable, or harder to get favorable results from?

compact size. It seems Honda used them on the front so they could save
more room for the engine bay, which is already tiny enough as it is!

 

I read up a lot on the subject, but what I know is only from what I
read. I have little hands-on experience when it comes to suspensions,
so I go on theory and basic physics.

Also, I do not feel comfortable realigning my wheels without accurate
measurements. I was wondering if you knew anything about that, besides
the "string around the car" method.

 

Well, the first thing you need to do is establish the car's "thrust
centerline". This is determined from the rear suspension toe. Once that is
known, you can then adjust front toe on either side so that it is parallel
to the thrust centerline.

Can you do this with a "string"? I suppose, but I wouldn't want to try it.

 

if you mean compliance in terms of vertical travel, there's no
difference. if you mean compliance in terms of geometry control and
degrees of freedom, wishbones are the way to go. basically, you can
keep the camber appropriate to lean angle /both/ sides of the car. with
mcpherson, you can kinda-sorta get it ok-ish for the outer wheel, but
the inner one goes to heck. in low traction environs like rallying on
dirt, it doesn't matter, hence subaru dominance in that arena. but on
black top, wishbone is the way to go. somewhere on the web is a table
of cornering g's pulled by different compact sport cars from the 80's &
90's. the crx was [is] better than than any other car in it's
class/tire width. look at any mcpherson vs. wishbone - they all have
wider tires just to keep the thing on the road. better yet, check out
any wide-tired car like bmw in a parking lot with the wheels at full
lock. see how much [how little] rubber is on the road on the inside tire?

that's minor. biggest advantage is /significant/ cost saving - much
lower component count and each component that's left is /much/ cheaper
to manufacture. look at the [forged?] knuckle on an integra - that
thing is at least 3 forming operations, each needing very expensive
tooling. a strut just has a cast sub axle bolted on the bottom.

there's plenty of room. mcpherson is all about cost. end of story.

if you want a car that can be tweaked and really handle on the curves,
get a post 88, pre-2000 civic, a post 88 crx, post 89 integra or a
prelude. the 06 si has a nice motor, but that's about it. seriously,
if you sell that car, you'll have money to spare for a good base car
from the above, /and/ a motor like this:

http://www.theoldone.com/articles/Larryscivic/Larrys_Civic.htm

 

Thanks for clearing up some of those questions. As for buying an older
car, it's out of the question for me. I don't have the money/know-how
for swaps and total modification, nor do I want to start with a used
chassis. I bought the '06 Si for its styling too, not just for the K20.

I perused through that link (too long for me to read tonight), and I
noticed from the pictures you used an aftermarket closed-jacket block.
Hypothetically, if I were to supercharge my K20, would I *need*
aftermarket pistons/conrods/block? I hear Honda crankshafts are rock
solid, and don't need to be upgraded.

I'm just wondering. I don't plan on supercharging, especially with
11.1:1 compression.

 

While this car is not being prepped for autocross, I live in an area
with long, curvaceous roads with above-average speed limits. I enjoy
driving my cars fast and hard, somewhat dangling on the border of
recklessness.

I understand that a car with understeer is more predictable and
intuitive than a car with oversteer/neutral steering capability, which
is why most production cars understeer by default. However, I'd like to
achieve neutral-ness and then force myself to adapt, as an experiment
of my driving technique/vehicle capability.

******************

Tele,

As a former Lotus Europa driver I can't let this go without a warning from
my own experience. Neutral steering and hard driving are a fractious
combination. Twice I found myself pointing the wrong way in curves with
absolutely no warning; I didn't even have my foot in the accelerator very
much. At least oversteering cars give some change in feel before coming
around; a neutral steering car puts Newton in the driver's seat very
suddenly indeed. All four wheels lose traction simultaneously and it makes
not the slightest difference if you try to steer out. You may as well let go
of the wheel because it does exactly nothing when you lose traction on all
four.

The Europa is a rear mid-engine design. I understand FWD is less
controllable at the limit if the suspension is set for neutral steering,
since there is a "dead man's corner" in the throttle response where either
increasing or reducing throttle will cause loss of control. I read a book
about sports car suspension in my enthusiast days, and it mentioned a FWD
racing car (Porsche?). Only two people ever agreed to drive it a second
time - one was reputed to be able to drive anything, and the other was a
motorcycle racer who thought all race cars handled like that.

Just sayin'

Mike

 

with respect, that means you're not serious. if you were, you'd take
the money you have into the si back out, and put less than half of that
money back into a vehicle that actually has the potential you "say" you
want.

don't ask me, ask larry widmer. that's not my car.

 

Mike,

All this input is forcing me to reconsider the modifications I have
done and had planned on doing. A nice RWD roadster would be nice
*cough* S2000 *cough* but, alas, I am bound by practicality and a
budget. I imagine oversteer would be hard to get used to after having
driven FWD all my life, but understeer is a wicked mistress. It's easy
enough to control (by letting off the throttle), but it slows me down
when I want to cut through a corner.

You've shown me how hellish neutral cars can be at the limit. Losing
grip on all four wheels at once seems frightful, but since traction is
divided equally on all four wheels, isn't the threshold for slippage
higher than on an unbalanced vehicle? In other words, in two identical
FF cars where one is set for moderate understeer and the other is
neutral, will the understeering car lose traction first, assuming both
cars are subjected to identical road conditions/lateral Gs?

I've often read that neutral steering is ideal for professional
drivers, and I'm struggling to understand how that correlates with my
limited skill and the limits of FWD.

 

jim beam,

I'm not a serious tuner, no. I bought the Si for a combination of
style, performance, and practicality. But mostly because it's a Honda
and it's a K20. I'm not trying to improve slalom times, only to refine
my daily driving experience.

 

The threshold is undoubtedly higher. The trick is that the edge is there
somewhere and it's a doozy. Truly expert drivers will beat me every time and
must have a better idea of where the limit is, but I wonder if they prefer
neutral steering when not competing. It is loads of fun under moderate
stress; the Lotus tires never squealed but would sing metallically in high
speed curves. At that point I always eased off, since I knew the edge was
somewhere near. The times I lost it were at under 30 mph with nobody ahead
of me or behind me, while the singing was more of a 50 mph + thing.

BTW, the rear wheels of the Europa have a large fixed camber, probably -10
degrees or more. Not sure just what effect that had.

Mike

 

Most (if not all) FWD Hondas are set up with zero toe. The steering IS
neutral. The difference is at the REAR. Positive toe back there along with
negative camber provide the propensity to understeer.

 

then put bigger rubber on it and stop bleating about understeer! fact
is, any of the hondas previously mentioned can double as daily drivers
/and/ serious performers. the only thing missing from your equation is
"style" and that's highly subjective. no one that's being passed by a
low flying honda on the outside curve of a negative camber is in a
position to worry about how your car looks from any direction other than
the rear.

 

the front toe may be neutral, but that's not what causes under-steer -
the same geometry in a rear engine vehicle will over-steer. and the
rear toe provides stability at speed. depending on configuration [like
that taken advantage of in 4ws preludes] it can improve cornering
significantly.

under-steer is partly a function of weight distribution and traction -
it tends to decrease as more power is applied. fwd vehicles have /all/
their significant weight on the steering wheels - as you try to turn,
inertia of the heaviest part of the vehicle wants to continue in a
straight line.

 

But the only thing I would expect would improve the Si for daily driving
would be increased Torque.

AAMOF, the understeer in the Si is easily corrected in corners by hitting
the gas, not the brake. Odd as it may sound, I go through some pretty
drastic on-ramps at 2AM at 60 MPH, accelerating when the understeer
presents itself.

This was also the opinion of almost every reviewer whose work I read before
buying the car.

--
Joseph M. LaVigne

http://www.thelavignefamily.us/MyPipePages/ - 9/1/2006 2:45:08 AM
Tobacconist Brick and Mortar Database: http://bam.tobaccocellar.org/

The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of
thinking that created them.

-- Albert Einstein