Originally posted by Auto-X Fil:
Hmmmm.
http://www.cse.psu.edu/~maynard/post/alignment.bmp
Here's your camber plate. C is max positive camber, D is max negative camber. A is minimum caster, B is maximum caster. Note that E gives you a pretty good camber gain from B without much caster sacrifice. E is about where you want to be. You certainly want to be between B and D - between those two it's a tradeoff, caster for camber. Outside of that quadrant you're losing at least one unnecessarily!
On the street, you go for the camber numbers you want, and see where the caster ends up. If caster isn't the same side to size you then adjust them until they (almost) are, giving up camber equality for caster equality. You'll note that there are two possible caster setting for each camber setting - one red, one green. Don't use the red ones! You want more caster, not less. There's no reason to use the red area on a Contour.
"In theory, practice should follow theory, but in practice, this is not always the case."
In your diagram, my street alignment is at A. The car feels pretty stable there. I moved it to D for yesterday's Solo event. Car felt twitchy, which was fine for autocross. I thought more caster would feel more stable, though, so I'm a little confused.
I gave the alignment shop specific numbers to shoot for on camber, and then told them to even up the caster as close to x as possible. I can't remember what x was, but it was a positive number (about 1.25 degree positive, IIRC)
Function before fashion.
'96 Contour SE
"Toss the Contour into a corner, and it's as easy to catch as a softball thrown by a preschooler." -Edmunds, 1998
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