I just talked to a guy from eibach tech line and he says that this will improve handling. The problem is to figure out the optimal adjustment. He was talking about maybe half a degree. Had anyone done this and if, what's the proper setting?

 

I didn't do it to my max yet but. When I had a mustang I put it at 1 degree negative all around. It made a big differance. When I go for another alingment I'm going for 1.2 NEG front and 1.7 NEG in rear.

 

Well it should depend from car to car. Maybe the max needs less? Also, how was your tire wear and was there any shaking at straight high speeds?

 

normal tread wear, no shakes.

 

for street use, 0.5 deg is about all you want. I have mine at -1 front, -1.5 rear, and I have some noticeable inner tread wear on my tires. it's not bad, but knocks a couple thousand miles off the life of the tires.

 

You will always want a little bit of neg camber. How much is the question. Matt mentions how much you should use.

Note: Use too much camber and you will:
1) Absolutely kill your inner tires. I mean you will cut the tire life in 1/2. So no more than about 1.5 neg like Matt says. Even 1.5 will significantly accelerate the tire wear.
2) Too much neg camber will actually HURT performance. Because how too much of the car's weight is now resting on the inner 1/3-1/2 of the tire. The outside portion of the tire is not doing much of anything. I ran a Datsun 510 this way until I could get the rear A-arms bent. Inside = bald. Outside = still had the new tire nubs. Handled like crap with that much camber

 

I notice you guys go with more negative in the rear. I read that for sharp twisties in FWD you should actually have more negative camber in the front. I assume then the factory maxima has a tendency to oversteer, hence more negative camber in the back to balance it out?

Jeff, what degree adjustment did you have on the 510?

 

510 after = about 1.5 deg neg.

Unless you mod the rear suspension, you 3-gen guys won't be adjusting any type of camber in the rear. You have to buy a camber kit or use two sets of toe adjusters.

For the gentlemen that wanted to go 1.7 neg in the rear. Say good by to your tires in short order. And when it gets wet, don't get dizzy when you do 360s!

Factory maxima is an understeering SOB. Even with full suspension and the thick Addco RSB, the handling is maybe "close" to neutral. Very difficult to get a heavy fwd/front engined car to oversteer unless you do something out of the ordinary

 

Even after all the mods with my car now, I STILL have problems with understeer. the only reason I'm -1.5 in the back is because of the custom parallel links I made at first were too long, and that's the farthest in I could adjust them... I've fixed that and will be going to -1 in the back next time I do an alignment.
for the fronts, I keep it at -1 for the street, and move them all the way in for track days. Ideally, you would have -3 to -4 camber up front and -1 to -2 in the back... but that's TRACK ONLY use where the cornering forces are high enough to cause the tires to flex and lay flat on the track.. you'll ruin your tires in no time if you drive that on the street.

 

I've got matt's rear parallel links. They were installed this weekend and first impressions were incredible. I'll make a thread once I put on more miles with them. Now I just need to align the car as the icing on the cake.

I wondered why matt and goon had the camber settings reversed because mine understeers as well. I thought it was an exception. I'll probably go with -1.2 front and -0.8 rear for slight oversteer.

 

It still won't even come close to oversteering

 

The -1.5 being .5 more negative than in the front obviously exacerbates your understeer. What's your toe adjustment? I was thinking to go 1/16" toe out fron and 0 rear. Apparently toe deviations affect tire wear much more negatively than camber.

You being a big fan of handling, here are some GREAT educational articles that I stumbled across in my research. I'd recommend everyone to take some time and read them..

http://www.aligncraft.com/terms/terms.html
http://www.ffcobra.com/FAQ/handling101.html
http://www.specprod.com/TECH_DIR/TEC...RT_FUND_2.HTML
http://www.cybercupracing.com/ultimate_setup_guide.htm
http://www.turbomopar.com/handling.html

 

You're probably right, but I'd rather be on the safe side the first time I'm dealing with oversteering tendencies. If it still understeers, I'll go -1.2f and -0.5r on the next alignment and play with f/r tire pressure.

 

I'll dig up my old alignment specs but I bet I'm at near -0.5 for the rear and it won't even come close to any type of oversteer.
I run Konis (1/2 stiff), Eibachs, ST front bar, Addco rear bar, 17x8s with 245-45-17s, FSTB.

Unless you do something REALLY funky to make your car handle worse, it's very difficult to make the max oversteer. I'm going to say, no reasonable adjustment to the camber or toe has enough power to affect handling that much. It took a huge Addco RSB that's twice as thick as the stock se bar the rear to even hint at neutral much less oversteer.

I'm sure you can get the car to do some bump oversteer stuff but I would hardly call that true oversteer.

 

I have done just about everything practical to prevent my car from understeering, and it STILL does. I chew the !@#)(!$ out of my front tires on the track and auto X because it always understeers. I've even jacked the pressures up to 60+psi in the back trying to make it lose traction easier. nope. no luck.

my next step is to completely remove the front sway bar and do some other tricks to make it rotate.

as for toe settings, I would leave it at the factory toe specs, otherwise you end up chewing through tires in 5-6000 miles a set. Trust me when I give you that number. I go through a set of tires in 4-5 months because of my agressive alignment settings, and I'm at 1/16" toe out as well. If you're not an avid road racer or auto Xer, then I suggest leaving it at zero toe.

 

Srry jeff, the 1.7 neg was outta ignorance.

I'm not worthy!

 

Thanks guys. The only "funky" thing you could do jeff is to jam tons of stereo equipment in the trunk.

Matt, I don't know if there's a way to do 3-4 in the front. When I was looking at the alignment kits, the largest degree of adjustability was 1.75. You mention that you increased REAR tire pressure. I thought lowering it would reduce understeer? About taking out the fsb, one of the sites says "Stiffer front sway bars will, in many cases, decrease understeer because of reduced body roll and better camber control."

 

you're reading too many sites for RWD cars. FWD dynamics are completely different. depending on the suspension setup, you can go many ways to reduce understeer. I've gone the way of the stiffer sway bar, and it made my problem worse. it got better when I switched to the stock one, but it's still not there yet. you can only make the suspension so stiff before it starts to drop in performance..


as for 3-4 camber in front, it's doable if you're willing to take some nasty tools to the car and do some heavy duty work. not for the faint of heart, but can easily be done. you also need to throw in some caster if you're going to go far enough into it to start chopping on your strut towers.
you can also use two of the oblong camber bolts in each strut. it makes aligning them more fun, but it's possible- just hope you never have to pull it apart for anything. it's bad enough trying to line up one camber bolt, and two are about as much fun as choosing which olsen twin you wanna bang.

 

Haha..I like the olson ANALogy.

 

what about different sized tires between the front and rear? i think i've heard of people doing that to get more oversteer. have you guys tried this at all?

 

If you guys are just driving on the streets, I wouldn't worry about too much negative camber. Sure, more is better for the turns but there is that trade-off for tire wear (tires are easily replaced)

IF you guys are taking your Max to the Tracks (like a road course) or autocross (Solo-II), the BEST way to know when you hit optimal negative camber is to use a pyrometer... a temperature measuring device that you can probe the outside, middle, and inside of the tire tread and record temperatures. It's not so much that they are even, but it's the spread you need to analyse.

On my 97 M3, the car is lowered quite a bit and I run camber plates... so -3.3* camber up front and -2.5* in the rear make the car handle like you would not believe! Tire wear? whatever! If I can get 1.5-2 years out of a set of tires, I am doing pretty good! (plus I switch to comp-r's for track days... saving my street tires.)

I'm sure FWD cars have different optimal settings. Use a pyrometer!

(BTW, even with that negative camber, car feels rock solid at 125+ mph! That was on 234/40-17 tires so probably less sidewall to flex than stock Maxima)

 

Well I just did the alignment and there was a problem of adjusting the right front camber, even with the alignment kit I bought. The tech said he tried as much as possible but could only get it to -0.5. I have to run -0.5 on all wheels because of that until I take it to an alignment-specialized shop next time. I guess it's time to switch from ST rear sway to addco. Another problem was the front caster, which is not adjustable. Right front side is +1.0 while the left front is +0.6. Anyone with a suggestion for this issue?

For those interested, here are the factory recommended specs:

Front camber -0.3 (specified range -1.8 to -0.3)

Rear camber -0.19 (specified range -1.3 to 0.3)

Front caster specified range 0.5 to 2.0

Front toe specified range 0.05 to 0.13

Rear toe specified range -0.19 to 0

I have turning angle differential, cross camber, cross caster, set back, and thrust angle figures for my car but there was no specified range available.