Nervous at high speeds

[danrem]

trust me you won't know how good a sportscar can be until its aligned properly

£150 to someone who really knows what they are doing is well worth it. The toyota specs you could drive a bus through and still "Technically" be in spec

For mostly fast-road use does anyone have the best toe, camber and castor angles for a 2000 pre-facelift MR2 on standard suspension? My wheel and tyres dimensions are standard ie. 6" wide 185/55VR15 front and 6.5" 205/50VR15 rear.

I have driven well aligned sportcars before and have trackdayed with my brother in his Caterham Superlight with 185bhp, which felt lovely around Brands and Anglesea. Should have noticed that this one had an issue but only tested it below 70mph in a variety on London suburban areas and it felt ok at lower speeds and I was blinded by its low mileage,  great aesthetic condition and great service history.

[Anonymous]

PM me your email and Ill send the numbers.

[ChrisGB]

First up, the camber difference is probably a red herring. A 1 degree difference could easily be in the tolerance of the strut leg to hub fixings and could possibly be sorted by loosening the hub carrier to strut leg bolts on the side that is the higher value, pulling the top of the wheel outwards, holding it while tightening them up again. However, a 1 degree difference will not be the cause of the issues you are having. Most modern tyres will happily work at much higher values that that. You may increase wear a little on the inside edge of the tyre, but that will be all you would expect to notice. Having too much camber on one side could be an indication of a bent strut rod, but this nearly always causes leakage. Normally, when a car has been kerbed, the lower arms are damaged and this leads to the camber being reduced as they are always going to be shorter once bent.

You could check the condition of all the bushes in the suspension, check torque of all the mount point bolts too. However, the most bleedin obvious thing here is mismatched tyres. I have driven an MR2 on mismatched front and rear and that particular combination (Nexen front and Kumho rear if I remember correctly) made the car feel horrible at around 60mph and even worse in a bend. Seriously, if that had been the only MR2 I ever drove, I would never have bought one. These cars are very sensitive to tyre choice. If you can get the Firestone 700s for the back end, I would go for it. I have run them on other cars and personally prefer them to Toyo T1R. It will probably cost less than a full geometry check anyway. Knowing the relative grip and behaviour of both tyre types you run, I would say you run the risk of unexpected and sudden oversteer in the wet. The FH700 is a tyre capable of very high grip levels.

Good alignment is essential and a full alignment machine can cost a lot of thousands to buy, so you will have to pay a fair bit to use one. These cars are very sensitive to alignment too. I currently run parallel front and 20 minutes total toe rear. Camber is 1.5 deg fronts and 2deg rear. The car is light but stable, even at very high speeds, turns in reasonably quickly and resists oversteer quite well. I run R888 which are OK up to 5 deg of camber.

Chris

[Phil_R]

I set mine to these settings after fitting Tein springs, running Yokohama AD08 tyres, I find the handling very nice and neutral

[PeteT]

I have been to these guys before when i had a mk2 and they are brilliant. They are not cheap but they were the only people to solve my mk2 issues that no one could fix up here.

Spoke to the geometry/suspension specialist at blackboots and gave him the settings shown on the results of the report.

Wheels In Motion are very highly thought of on the MX-5 forums.
They are part of Blackboots now, I believe.

Yes, i believe they are the same company. It looks like they have merged into one.

[matchlessman]

Can I ask a question about the camber angles and settings etc.  should they be the same on the left as the right.  We had our facelift checked and adjusted at the weekend and there is a different setting on the left to the right.  I put this down to road camber etc but now im not so sure having seen Phils settings above.

[ChrisGB]

Can I ask a question about the camber angles and settings etc.  should they be the same on the left as the right.  We had our facelift checked and adjusted at the weekend and there is a different setting on the left to the right.  I put this down to road camber etc but now I'm not so sure having seen Phils settings above.

Camber is specifically a product of the tolerances between the hub and strut leg and although it should be the same, most drivers would not notice a degree difference. It is not adjustable with the standard MR2 suspension. The settings for toe must be near equal on opposite sides or the car will "crab". Thrust angle should always be close to zero (this effectively being the difference in direction of travel between the front and rear wheels).

Chris