Alignment specs and what do the various settings mean

[Shadowden]

I read through a thread on the Mazda3forums site, and came away with the following settings for my Mz3 hatchback, that will be lowered on Eibach Pro Kits and have SPC camber arms (adjustable). The car is my daily driver and sees 60+ miles a day, so tire wear is imortant withplenty of spirited driving on the ramps

These are the settings I was thinking of asking for:
Front
Toe=1/16" total out
Camber=unadjustable, but will ask for as much as they can give me?
Cross Camber=0
Caster/Cross Caster=what is this and what does it do? Seems like it should be 0 for cross caster so both tires are even

Rear
Toe=0
Camber = Front or 2/3 of front
Cross Camber= 0
Caster/Cross Caster ?

Not sure all of those are even appllicable. What about thrust angle?

Help is appreciated. Had new tires installed a few weeks ago and the springs and arms are going on in a couple days, followed immediately by an alignement.

Thanks,
Ryan

[jamiel]

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=4

As you (hopefully) now know by reading "it depends". What are your goals with the alignment? Where and how do you drive? Do you want cross-caster and/or cross camber?
Generally speaking-
Front- 1/16 front toe out is reasonable. Our autocross car is toed out 1/8, my P5 is 1/16 as I don't need/want that aggressive of turn in for street use
Rear- anywhere from 1/16 toe in to 1/16 to to out is a reasonable range, again, depending on what you want to do

Camber -1 to -2 degrees is reasonable for street driving, again the article explains the tradeoff.

You can easily experiment with toe yourself with an inexpensive toe gauge and a couple wrenches. Probably good to have the alignment done to "square" the car and set a preferable camber (gauges for camber are a bit more $$s), then fiddle with toe to your preference.

[Shadowden]

That was informative. Based on that article, it seems like I should keep my rear camber close to stock, which I think is 1.2-1.6 degrees. Otherwise, it seems like my settings would make sense.

Given that I really like to drive the ramps hard and like to drive the car like it was meant to be driven what would you change in my settings. I think I would fall under the enthusiastic driver category.

Tires are Kumho Ecsta ASX.

[Shadowden]

I just had them re-set to stock specs with 0 toe in the rear.

A good resource I found
http://spcalignment.com/catalogs

Open the resource book. It discusses each of the measurements and the effects they have.

[erod550]

When my Miata was lowered on coilovers, I had like 8+ degrees of camber in the back lol.

[Colombia28]

When my Miata was lowered on coilovers, I had like 8+ degrees of camber in the back lol.

Nice! That must have looked mean! How fast did those tires last?

[Shadowden]

Just heard from the shop. Saifd the car is driving nice and straight, but still getting road noise and say it is the axles being at a different angle in the front. I agree they are at a different angle to the car, but it seems like they would always be at different angles.

Said they will either wear in or break. Total toe out is 1/10" Seems excessive to me, but they say it is within spec....of course that was yesterday and I said soemthing to them about it, so maybe they brought it in a touch.

Erod, I don't know about your miata looking mean...more like a knocked kneed girl