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Alignment Suggestions For Track Day Car


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Hi all,

 

I have an appointment to get an alignment next week.

I am guessing these guys will have never had a Datsun in the shop before.

 

What do you track addicts run for alignment settings?

 

Not sure it it matters but I am on German lowering springs so the car is pretty low to the ground. also running 16X8. 

I didn't really see any room for adjustment out back so we will say front only. 

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Do you have any adjustable suspension parts? Control arms, camber plates, camber bushings, etc?

Stock you can shim a tiny amount of caster in the front and set toe, and that's it. You can do that yourself, not even worth taking it to an alignment shop, unless you just want to see how bad it is.

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Suspension settings will depend largely on what kind of setup you're running (springs, lowering, sway bars, wheel size and rubber, etc) and what type of track events you plan on running (settings for auto-x can be very different from road course settings.), and your personal level of experience.  John Coffey wrote a couple good threads on this topic a few years ago...they might be in the FAQs?  I'll see if I can locate them.

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Z car Front, Toe: 1/16” to 3/32” in, Camber: 0 to 1 negative with 1 being preferred.Caster: 4 to 6 postive. The actual number between 4 and 6 is not important, only that both sides are the same. Rear Toe: 1/16” in Camber: 0 to 1 negative with 1 being preferred.

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Here are my settings, using only camber plates. The car handles perfectly to my taste, breakaway is very neutral. I don't have any rear toe adjustment otherwise I would've dialed it down.

 

image.thumb.png.0e002720bafaefcfea15ea6280be8b4e.png

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  • 1 month later...
On 6/27/2019 at 4:59 PM, jhm said:

John Coffey wrote a couple good threads on this topic a few years ago...they might be in the FAQs?  I'll see if I can locate them.

 

"https://forums.hybridz.org/topic/60536-alignment-settings/"

 

On 6/27/2019 at 11:22 PM, Leon said:

Here are my settings, using only camber plates. The car handles perfectly to my taste, breakaway is very neutral. I don't have any rear toe adjustment otherwise I would've dialed it down.

 

The camber numbers are similar to JohnC's "race" setup.   The "street" setup has about half of the camber-angle.

 

Regarding the rear toe... it is not inconceivable that there is a manufacturing-flaw in the McPherson strut housings... that is, in how the hole for the spindle-pin was drilling into the casting.  It's a defect on the parts themselves, and not a function of how the suspension is set up.  The remedy would be to find another McPherson strut assembly.  This problem is, I think, more common on the front-end; I had to go through several junkyard parts to find a matched-pair that was symmetric

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In my experience, there is a ton of variability in the body/chassis components, including 40+ years of wear and tear. My old 260Z aligned perfectly and that was a car that had been salvaged due to a rear impact.

 

I had to mill slots into the transverse link mounts on this current car to get the toe even. Swapping to different strut housings evened out the camber.

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