Alignment Results - Good or Bad?

[Bristol]

I recently installed some Gemballa lowering springs on my 2000 Boxster S. I let the car settle out for a couple weeks and did some light driving. As expected the alignment was all screwed up. So I got it aligned last Friday. Here's the best they could do on camber, caster, and toe:

Front

Camber -1.0 left, -0.7 right

Caster 7.7 left, 7.5 right

Toe 1/32 left, 0 right

Rear

Camber -2.5 left, -2.4 right

Toe 1/32 left, 1/32 right

The car now tracks straight with the steering wheel straight (didn't before) and everything feels fine. I'm disappointed in the rear camber though. It still seems too negative to me and doesn't look good. I have very little experience with alignments though. Folks at the PCA tour this weekend said the same thing though - way too much negative rear camber. I think they put the priority on getting the rear toe good and then let the camber fall where it did.

So what do you guys think? Is this a good final alignment setup or did they do a poor job? The work is guaranteed for 30 days...

Edited September 18, 2007 by Bristol

[demosan]

I recently installed some Gemballa lowering springs on my 2000 Boxster S. I let the car settle out for a couple weeks and did some light driving. As expected the alignment was all screwed up. So I got it aligned last Friday. Here's the best they could do on camber, caster, and toe:

Front

Camber -1.0 left, -0.7 right

Caster 7.7 left, 7.5 right

Toe 1/32 left, 0 right

Rear

Camber -2.5 left, -2.4 right

Toe 1/32 left, 1/32 right

The car now tracks straight with the steering wheel straight (didn't before) and everything feels fine. I'm disappointed in the rear camber though. It still seems too negative to me and doesn't look good. I have very little experience with alignments though. Folks at the PCA tour this weekend said the same thing though - way too much negative rear camber. I think they put the priority on getting the rear toe good and then let the camber fall where it did.

So what do you guys think? Is this a good final alignment setup or did they do a poor job? The work is guaranteed for 30 days...

You are correct in that the rear negative camber is set too high. Spec for your car is -1.3 ( +/- .3). Looks like you are a full degree out of nominal settings each side.

demosan

[Topless]

Rear camber is very aggressive for street driving. If you do much highway driving your tires will tend to have excessive wear on the inside rears. Nice setup for the track though.

[vrauba]

Forgive my stupidity, but if you have your car lowered with competition springs, do you still try to attain the factory specs of the stock springs? I thought it would be a totally different set-up. If I had a shop install a set of H&R or Eibach or Rook Racing or Gemballa springs, what spec's would I give them or does an alignment shop not need any input from me? This would be for street, not track. Can anybody recommend or list the alignment spec's or is this a totally stupid question?

[Bristol]

Forgive my stupidity, but if you have your car lowered with competition springs, do you still try to attain the factory specs of the stock springs? I thought it would be a totally different set-up. If I had a shop install a set of H&R or Eibach or Rook Racing or Gemballa springs, what spec's would I give them or does an alignment shop not need any input from me? This would be for street, not track. Can anybody recommend or list the alignment spec's or is this a totally stupid question?

No, that isn't a stupid question at all! You are right that it would be difficult, if not impossible without camber plates, to get the car back to the stock settings once lowered. That's why I gave the alignment tech the ROW sport settings from Porsche. The ROW sport setup is 20 mm lower in the front and 10 mm lower in the rear than our US standard setup. I thought this would be a more obtainable goal to reach for with my car lowered 25 mm front and rear. Still I'm about a degree more negative in camber in the rear, even with using these specs.

[jmatta]

I have H&R sport springs on my '02 S...I run 2.5* negative camber in the rear, as well; fronts are about 1.25* negative. It's a bit aggressive for the street, but the tires will turn to hockey pucks before I wear them out. The negative camber looks good to me as I'm used to running alot of negative camber on my 911s.

Edited September 19, 2007 by jmatta

[Bristol]

Just as a follow up, yesterday I took my car back to the tire/wheel shop that did my alignment. The work was still under a 30 day warranty. I had to fight with them a little to get them to see what they could do on improving the rear camber. They ended up working on it another 1.5 hours and got the rear camber down from -2.5 to -2.0. I think that's probably the best they can do without camber plates. I'll run it this way and just see what happens to my tire wear. Looking at it from the rear it still looks like it has a lot of negative camber. If the tire wear is bad I'll make sure to get some camber plates and get it realigned when I get new tires.

I've got Kuhmo tires on there now, which aren't bad. But I'm just waiting for them to wear out so I can replace them with PS2 tires. My understanding though is that the PS2's are pretty expensive, so if I do have an issue with tire wear, I'll make sure to get it resolved before I put these on.

Kirk

[atmorris]

I recently installed some Gemballa lowering springs on my 2000 Boxster S. I let the car settle out for a couple weeks and did some light driving. As expected the alignment was all screwed up. So I got it aligned last Friday. Here's the best they could do on camber, caster, and toe:

Front

Camber -1.0 left, -0.7 right

Caster 7.7 left, 7.5 right

Toe 1/32 left, 0 right

Rear

Camber -2.5 left, -2.4 right

Toe 1/32 left, 1/32 right

The car now tracks straight with the steering wheel straight (didn't before) and everything feels fine. I'm disappointed in the rear camber though. It still seems too negative to me and doesn't look good. I have very little experience with alignments though. Folks at the PCA tour this weekend said the same thing though - way too much negative rear camber. I think they put the priority on getting the rear toe good and then let the camber fall where it did.

So what do you guys think? Is this a good final alignment setup or did they do a poor job? The work is guaranteed for 30 days...

I have my '03 with ROW M030 set as follows:

Camber F -1.2 degrees both sides

Camber R -2.0 degrees both sides

Front toe 1/32

Rear toe 1/32

Great street/track setup. On the street, the car drives like it has claws, it just plants and rails around the twisties and switchbacks, and doesn't railroad track much at all. However, I only drive mine a few thousand miles a year, so I can't say how tire wear will be. I don't really care because, I'm not worried if I have to put a set of tires on every few years. Haven't got it on a track yet, but I'm dying to.

Edited October 12, 2007 by Andy_M