Need suspension advice from fellow ITA CRXers

[cjfinkle]

I recently finished the suspension on the CRX I am preparing for ITA/PS-2 competition and now I am on the hunt for alignment settings. Before I take the car in to get the alignment done, I'd like to find out from others on what has worked for them. Specifically, I'm curious as to what caster and toe others have along with their camber settings. My setup consists of Koni single adjustables, 500f/700r springs, front radius rod bearings, rear 22mm ST sway, stock front sway (or maybe no sway), Prothane Bushings, Mugen trailing arm bushings. I would greatly appreciate anyones advice or comments.

[Jon Nelson]

I'd start out with zero (or MAYBE a little, 1/16") toe OUT at the front, and zero (or maybe 1/16") toe IN at the rear.

Your car is gonna be a little tail happy to begin with, so these conservative settings should be OK to start.

After you get used to the car, you could start adding toe out at the front to get it to turn in better, and toe OUT at the rear to keep it turning once set in to the corner.

Carefull, though, I'd say get the car working as well as you can with shock settings and sway bar adjustments first, THEN f around with alignment. Chances are, in the first season, you'll have your hands full with other things, and won't have the testing time to truly dial in alignment settings.

I'd like to hear others opinions on what might work, too, since I didn't really play with this much last year (my first year)

Jon

[cbotha]

I typically run 0 or 1/16 out toe in the front and 0 to 1/16 in in the rear. Camber wise I run -3 in the front (-3.5 on really tight tracks) and -2.5 in the rear. Tire temps say that is too much negative camber in the front but it is faster that way.
Also, I run with no front bar.
Make sure you don't set the car up to low or depending upon what shocks you run you have the possibilty of bottoming them out(especially in the rear). Put a zip tie around the shaft and run it to see where the travel is.
You will need a camber kit for the front. Napa makes the best which is an offset bushing design.

[cjfinkle]

Thank you both for the replies. cbotha, can you give me more info on the Napa camber kit for the front?

[Tom Blaney]

Colin:

Please let me know which races you intend to run in the Northeast this year, so I can warn everybody ahead of time. We seem to have less carnage without you.

By the way, you pretty much ruined the ARRC race for the 3-4 of us behind your self induced oil spewing start.

Tom Blaney

[lb2]

Camber kit for the front & back are illegal, as for setup I run 3 negative front left 2.5 front right and 1.75 for both rear and 1/16 toe out front and 1/16 toe in on the back, no sway bar at all on front and back.
Good luck.
Louis Boustani

[Jon Nelson]

Louis;

How are you acheiving this amount of camber, if the kits are illegal? I agree, anything other than offset bushings in the front is a violation of the rules, so, yeah, the commonly availiable "sliding pivot" types of camber kit is out of the question.

AND... what spring rates are you running?

I ran with a stock rear bar, no front, and am suprised that you run without one at all!!! Do you have a locked diff or something else to your setup? Or do you simply like it that way (understeer)?

Jon

[cjfinkle]

If I remember right he is running 500/700, although I did see his car for sale somewhere and it said 700/500. But that must have been a typo. 700/500 with no rear sway.....ouch! So i can use offset bushings and not the "slide pivot" type? Also, do any of you know how much caster you have? Im installed radius rod bearings but really have no idea on how much caster I should have.

[Hracer]

Hey Louis! I can try to pitch in a little since I co-drove with Louis his car last year.

It has 500f, 700r springs (not the other way around), with the double adj. Konis from opm. These shocks are very stiff. We didn't run any sway bars because through the alignment we had in combination with those springs and stiff shocks, the car has perfect balance. By that I mean you just give an initial small turn on the wheel and the car will turn by itself for the rest of the corner without any more steering input. (crx guys should know that feeling) If anything Louis car is setup on the loose side, but it's faster that way. The camber basically came more out of luck more than anything else from lowering the car. You can't do much at all to change it, so you're pretty much stuck with whatever you get after putting on the suspension. Good luck!

Alex

[This message has been edited by Hracer (edited March 15, 2002).]

[lb2]

Hello friends, Alex gave my answer to your questions, and it all depends on how you like driving the car, I like the car loose ( so does Alex) and it helps for Endurance racing toward the end of the race the car becomes neutral. Also I don't have any locked dif. I have Quaife, as for negative camber I get that from lowering the car. As for caster I really don't know and we never touch them or adjusted them since OPM put the car together for me. The car is still for sale and my price is under $10k for now if you know anyone insterested, it is a great car with over $22k investement and I need to sell it quickly to finish my Spec Miata. I will be running the car again at the end of the month at Road Atlanta and if you have any intersted buyer maybe that can tested on the test day that weekend, the car has been fixed after kissing the wall at the Endurance last ARRC and the damage is not much anyway but the car has been sitting for 2 month waitting for Koni to finish rebuilding the shocks ( free rebuild by Koni ARRC contingency win )
Louis Boustani

[cbotha]

The Napa part number that you are looking for is 264-3937 (you will need one for each side) and is an offset bushing and is legal in IT.

Mr Tom Blaney

I'm sorry if you have a problem with me, why don't you tell it to my face instead of writing snippy little comments on message boards when I am offering advise on car setup.

[Tom Blaney]

Unfortunatly you didn't listen to me when you crashed me and Ian Prout out on two separate incidents at Lime Rock in the same weekend. Then you didn't listen to me when I told you to relax a little when you spun in every practice session at the ARRC.Then you didn't listen to me when I told you that you should not replace the head gasket with < 1h our before the ARRC Race start.

So now all I ask is you warn us when you are coming to any of our local events. As far as setup advice goes .......

[This message has been edited by Tom Blaney (edited March 18, 2002).]

[cjfinkle]

Thank you guys for all of your input. I really appreciate. As for you Tom, I really don't appreciate you congesting my thread with personal matters. Please keep personal matters personal. Email always works best.

[Tom Blaney]

Sorry, I normally don't, but you obviously didn't have to open your checkbook after a race with him. Perhaps it will make him realize that he needs to address some safty issues, and be more aware that this is suppose to be fun not combat.

[This message has been edited by Tom Blaney (edited March 19, 2002).]