Quote:
Originally posted by mason
Take care when reducing rear toe though as you don't want the rear to go to toe OUT under load. This is what early (1991/2) MR2's were infamous for.
The Elise always runs toe OUT at the front to make the turn-in more positive and control the way the car corners better.
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It's an interesting excercise to figure out ideal alignment settings. Sure, you can use your handy-dandy pyrometer to determine your optimal camber in a particular diameter skidpad, but far too often people rely on this as the end of their testing. Granted, if your competition/goal is to go as fast as possible on this particular skidpad then you're set! However, it's rarely that simple.
I'd agree that you want to be VERY careful about your rear toe when taking the Elise to the track. Little rear toe-in combined with a low polar moment and you've got a handful! Autocross is going to be an entirely different animal, however. Unless you have a lot of trouble putting down power (read: Corvette Z06, etc.), rear toe-in is generally a negative in and autox situation.
Most cars (the US Elise is likely going to be included in this bunch) are designed to have good high-speed stability. The cost of this, however, is lack of low-speed nimbleness (is that a word?) As such, an ideal alignment for autox can be downright scary at higher speeds. The ability to flick the car through a slow, tight corner is greatly aided by less rear toe-in (or even some toe-out in the case of most FWD cars).
It will be interesting to see how people running the Elise in SCCA Solo2 Stock class align the car. If Mason's post above about possible alignments is any indication, it may not be possible to dial out as much rear toe-in as would be desirable without changing suspension bushings (strictly forbidden in Stock class).
Mason, I'll be more than willing to help you dial in that ideal alignment...no charge!
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