Alignment specs found!

[fastball]

Someone on the GMI forum caught a glimpse of the SS alignment specs.

http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f...t-specs-69389/

[headpunter]

im not sure what that info even means

[ucla1ove3]

me either

[headpunter]

hey forget that

what the hell do those camber and toe numbers mean

[fastball]

The three main specs used for aligning the wheels of a car are camber, caster, and toe

The camber angle is the angle a tire makes with respect to a vertical line.

Positive Camber = Tops of tires point outward if viewed from the front of the car.

Camber affects directional stability and tire wear. A difference between the front wheel camber settings will cause your car to pull to one side.

Negative camber helps cornering power and turn-in, but too much will wear out the edges of the tires quickly.

Toe = distance between the front of the tires and their rears, or if you look at the tires from the front and the steering wheel is set to dead center, it's how the tires are aligned if they are angled left to right.

Caster = The angle your wheels pivot about to the vertical when you steer. It keeps the wheels running in a straight line and causes them to straighten when coming out of a turn.

Increasing caster also provides better handling w/o the tire wear.

[headpunter]

so what do those numbers mean then?

[fastball]

Originally Posted by headpunter

so what do those numbers mean then?

The numbers are in degrees off center, with center being 0.00 degrees. Next time you take your car in for an alignment, ask for the spec sheet (they should actually give it to you with your receipt anyway).

It will tell you what the factory advised specs are (as seen here for the 2010 SS Camaro), and how far your car was off (they will tell you where your car actually was)

No alignment is absolutely perfect, not even from the factory. Most manufacturers have a specified range for proper tire life that is acceptable without noticable handling changes. As I said, they will play around with different cambers and toe-ins during R&D untill they find the right combination of the handling they are looking for without chewing up the tires in 15k miles.

If they wanted to, they could really dial the alignment in to where the car stays completely straight, locked in, no matter what, but if you try to turn you'll rip the tires appart. On the other hand, they could make the alignment so your tires last 100k miles, but steering it and controling it would be a real challenge.

All those IVERs we saw getting all abused and dirty for the last 6 months? I guarantee you one of the things the Camaro engineers were playing with was the alignment specs. They'd drive an IVER for days, weeks, or months at a certain spec, and if they like the handling, they'd check tire wear. If the wear pace is too fast, they'd dial something out. If the tires are wearing fine, they'd dial something in untill they get it just right.