Thread: In need of alignment and so so setup

It is as far as my head would go + what I've noticed by trying things and I know that a great alignment job gives so much driving pleasure for years to come. I believe it's very important to get the most out of it.

Nobody wants to say anything about this?

I'm stuck on the choice of positive or negative camber and I realize I'm a bit late with my questions, I haven an appointment for alignment in 14 hours but some directions would be great, I don't know the person who will align my car yet and if he is like, no, no and no, I'm stuck.

Positive or negative camber? Really? Take it to the shop and have them get is as close to the stock specs. as possible. In NO circumstances (at least for our cars) do you want positive camber.

Then I hope the mechanic will explain to mewhy is that, good thing is that in an hour it wil be aligned and of course it wil be always a lot better then what I now have.

I'm afraid that for my proper understanding of all this I need two alignments

What also wonders me, what Nissan has written, that it is important to have the mats in place and why the Middle East roads need less camber then the Europese roads.

I also would say by having the fronts positive, negative or just at 0, what seems to be tolerance, the quality of the results will depend on the mechanic.

richardwbb To give you an idea \\--// (anything more than 90* the top of the wheel leaning away from the car) going to this ||--|| (90*) is not what you want, that is + positive camber. It is very dangerous to drive a car that has positive camber. You need negative camber like this //--\\ but not to steep an angle. You want as close to the manufacturers' settings as you can get like Wes said.

If you don't need the wheel spacers for clearance don't put them on your car.They are a last resort for clearance.

There is no way to adjust caster on a stock car, you need to buy camber plates or at least a whiteline bushing if you want some more caster which is good for our cars.

Don't worry about those old Ferraris or any other kind of car especially rear wheel drive cars their alignments and suspensions are too different from ours. You will have really big problems if you do.


Here are some links that further explain some of this stuff
Car handling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Car handling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thank you for your input, it was very helpful for me communicating proper with the mechanic, who turned out to be a experienced man. He asked me if I wanted too much negative camber (/---\) to look cool, so I said no of course, he liked the camber plates and he also tried to put the steeringwheel straight, which not really worked out perfectly but he said when you get the new tyres, I'll fix that.

He also asked me a lot and told me a lot, (I was doing my best to not ask too much questions, all in all it took 90 minutes) also about other cars and I'm sure he got the message and probably was looking for answers from me he had to pull out of me, at a few things I told him, I really don't follow anymore what you are saying.

He also asked what the heck happened with the car, so I told him somebody crashed in to the front wheel and that it was visible in the whole chassis. I noticed he didn't touch the camberplate on that side, telling me it was good already and sometimes you are lucky with that.

I am sure I won't get clearance problems so easily on the rear anymore, he said clearance wasn't too great and might become a problem, so I felt between the rim and spring and said that I expect that won't become a problem, but I didn't feel like crashing the car over a bad road to be sure

However, the clearance on the front wheel that took the beating is too small, other wheel I can tell it's too small too but didn't hear it, so maybe I'm better off to stop using the spacers, of course I know I need a ''stretchbench'' for the car and there is also some room for hammering. What I'm gonna do is let it hit the tyre a few more times and start looking for where it hit. Maximum steering and going through a hole in the road is definately a no-no, so actually I lowered it too much or need to stiffen it more.

But for looks I'm willing to do my best.

Here are the pictures, as you can see the first camberplate is default, the other side was adjusted, so that should say something about what the chassis took at that accident.

I've tried to translate the printout, maybe not everything was translated properly.






For the readable version: http://parkeerdoos.netau.net/alignment-print.gif

He also told me he adjusted the car for driver weight a tenth.

I noticed the appearing more stifness of the passengerside didn't go away after aligning, I'm not sure how that is possible. (This was already there before I started hard cornering to the right, which I seem to do more often atm, on summerdays and a lot of roundabouts I usually loose the passengerside shockie rear the first :rofl.