Alignment: Performance vs Wear

Getting ready for the upcoming auto-x season and was thinking about running a more aggressive alignment, BUT it will have to do double-duty on the street as a commuter. I'd like to hear any experience you have with how this can affect tire wear.

Car is a 2006 RX-8. I'll be running the 245/35 Hoosier A6 in C stock. I've been planing to run between 1.5-1.9 degrees of camber front and back and with 1/8" total toe in on the back (but I might wait on the toe until I try out some different front sway bars). I'll obviously be switching back to street tires after the event and don't want to destroy them too quickly.

My experience with this in the past has been that toe is what will really kill the tires, and camber in this range is not going to speed up wear too much, but let me know what your experiences have been.

Thanks!

Seconded. Camber will hasten inside wear with (relatively) long use. If you run tires you can flip inside to outside you can get more life. It's toe that shreds tires.

On the M3 I use -3.5F -2.2R camber, zero toe Ft, 1/8" total toe in R, and all the caster I can get.

Is identical camber F+R the hot setup on the RX-8? most RWDs favor more to lots more to a whole freakin' load more F - camber.

I don't think you can get a lot more camber than this (I'll be in stock class so no suspension mods other than shocks).

I've been trolling the RX8 club forums and this seems to be pretty close to what the B-stock nationals guys are running.

IIRC the wisdom in the Miata world is that moderate negative camber will be fine on a city car with no noticeable acceleration of wear, but toe will kill tires. How much toe? I really don't know.

Anyone have any further input about toe-induced tire wear?

1/8th inch is the suggested toe on a lot of cars. You may find that that is the reccomended setting for your car.

Toe-in at the rear? Really? I set rear toe at zero for all of the RWD cars I have played with (RX7s and Miatas). On street driven cars, I will have a little toe-in on the front to decrease wandering and improve straight line but not on the rear tires.

Camber at -1.5-1.9 won't wear the tires too badly. I run about that much on the FD which gets triple duty action of street, autox and track days.

I ran 1/8 toe out on the front of my CRX. It ate tires but MAN OH MAN did it turn in.

Rear toe in is to assist getting power down on cars that have enough ass to induce wheel spin. When I was autocrossing the M3 I was using up to 1/8" per side. The car drove off corners very well, and used up rear tires like crazy.

I run zero toe front, but most folks run toe out. That can be scary on grooved pavement in a torrential downpour.

So weird hearing people say 1/8inch toe in...I rarely hear that around here. Toe kills tires, look up the suggested range from the manufacturer and keep it within spec. Adjust camber and caster to your liking and you shouldn't have that big of a problem.

I just did an alignment on my T/A which kinda does double duty. Camber is ~-2.1 degrees on each side (front), Caster is around ~2.4 each side (front), Toe is at -0.05 on each side (front). Cross Camber = 0.2, Crass Caster is -0.3, and Total Toe went from 3.03 down to -0.14. Taking the tie rods off really threw off the toe lol.