Alignment Results - Okay?

[Kirk]

I recently installed some Gemballa lowering springs on my 2000 Boxster S (they were $150 on eBay, new, hehehe). I let the car settle out for a couple weeks and did some light driving. As expected the alignment was all screwed up from the lowering and my messing around with the suspension.

So I got her aligned today. I tried to get it aligned to the ROW specs since that setup is also a bit lower than the US setup. Mine is pretty low though. One shop couldn't even get my car up on the lift! Any way, 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.

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...

Kirk

[blue2000s]

Originally Posted by Kirk

I recently installed some Gemballa lowering springs on my 2000 Boxster S (they were $150 on eBay, new, hehehe). I let the car settle out for a couple weeks and did some light driving. As expected the alignment was all screwed up from the lowering and my messing around with the suspension.

So I got her aligned today. I tried to get it aligned to the ROW specs since that setup is also a bit lower than the US setup. Mine is pretty low though. One shop couldn't even get my car up on the lift! Any way, 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.

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...

Kirk

For a track car, that rear camber would probably be great. For a road car, it'll probably wear the tires a little unevenly. That's what happens when you lower a MacPherson car.

[Gary in BR]

What are the settings for a ROW lowered car.

I am going through the same thing on my car after installing coil overs.
I dont have my numbers with me but they where able to get the front within oem specs the rear is way off.

I assume camber plates would help??

[Kirk]

Right Gary, I think camber plates in the rear would help as you can't adjust the top mounting of the shocks, but you can do that in the front. After a lot of research last night I think I've concluded that toe in the rear was more important than camber, so the alignment tech dialed in the toe perfectly and then just got the camber as good as he could... It's a compromise no matter how you cut it.

The ROW alignment specs are on page 0-70 of the General manual from Porsche.

Here's a link to a post that has all of the specs in it:

http://www.renntech.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9652

Kirk

[Kirk]

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