Hi, all. I have a buddy who is new to autocross. He's driving a 2006 or 2007 PRHT on stock suspension and all-seasons. It's even an automatic, but he doesn't drive stick. I think I have convinced him to buy some summer rubber for it, but I want to tell him to have it aligned when he does.
Does the standard "all the negative camber in front and half a degree less out back" apply to the NC?
What kind of settings can you get with a stock NC?
Any info is appreciated. Thanks.
My car was better with a little more rear camber, but most people follow the half a degree less/stand up the rear tires as much as you can plan. A little bit of Toe Out in the front can be helpful to combat some of the understeer, I think that gets into driving style/preference though. My co-driver also did toe out in the rear on his car but I wasn't a huge fan of the change especially for driving on the street.
For CS AutoX I liked:
Front:
Max Negative Camber (-2.2 stock for me, I've seen 1.7-2.4 on stock cars)
Max Caster after Camber is Set
0 Toe (I liked +.15 once I got more comfortable, 0 to -.15 is probably better for starting out though)
Rear:
-2 Camber (I ran 1.7 on the stock setup for a while and the car really wanted to drift -2 worked a lot better for me)
-.15 Toe
The NC has different camber curves than NA/NB, so you don't need as much stagger front/rear.
We haven't done any AutoX with ours, but these have been good performance street numbers on FM Springs/Konis:
F: -1.6* Camber / 5.5 Caster / 0 or very minimal toe in
R: -1.5* Camber / ~.05-.1" total toe in
With sticky rubber (RE71R), the above numbers are not sufficient for track, so for track:
F: -1.9* camber/ 5.9 caster / 0 toe
R: -1.8* camber/ .1" total toe in
Note that this is my wife's car, and she's usually the driver, even on the track (we have an NA track car), so I haven't gone to extremes with it. I've found the steering to be really responsive with 0 toe on the front, haven't tried toe out yet. You can really feel even a little toe in in the steering, but it will increase stability on the highway. The 'street' numbers above showed minimal wear characteristics, but the track numbers will cause some wear in daily driving.
"Does the standard "all the negative camber in front and half a degree less out back" apply to the NC?"
Your are correct but I doubt that you can get much negative camber on a stock NC. On a lowered NC-.2.5 / -2.0 rear is a good place to start. Mine had -2.2 / - 1.7 and it could have used a more since the tires (Dunlop Z2 235/45-17) were wearing on the outsides. That's mostly driving HPDE but some autocross.
Your buddy is going to end up hating the stock suspension after doing a few or even one autocross event - the NC is an outstanding car except for the stock springs and shocks which are terrible for hard driving. I recommend looking at http://www.mazdatalkforum.com for suspension settings and advice - the posts by Brian Goodwin are accurate.
You'll need to log in to post.
