Has any one changed the rear toe-out themselves?
I wanted to see if it is something I could change myself before entering an autocross, then change back for street/track.
Questions:
If I mark the current position with some white paint, or such, can I easily and accurately return to the current alignment?
Do I want to go full toe-out for autocrossing? If I do, will it be the same on both sides or do I need to measure to make sure it is?
Torque specs for the bolts?
What else do I need to know? (I'm pretty handy with a wrench but have never tried to change my alignment specs before).

 

Mark,
I'm not sure you can do a really good job of changing toe between track and street by doing it yourself. I haven't tried this with the TEAM MCO car but watching the guys at BimmerHaus do the alignment on the rear I know that getting toe set to where you want it and then being able to tighten up the bolts without it changing is next to impossible. Given this I would suspect your alignment would progressively get worse and worse as you changed it between types of driving.

On our car we run a total of 1/16" toe out on the front and rear. We haven't seen any significant tire wear based on this set up but we are using the run-flats for normal street use. I suspect we could use a bit more toe-out in the rear but wouldn't run any more than 1/8" toe out in rear.

Hope this helps!

Mark

 

Thanks Mark!

 

I'm a little confused about why you want to run toe out at the rear. Toe out at the rear will make overstear harder to recover - or are you measuring at the back of the tires rather then the front? Usually you want toe out at the front to give more turning bite (inside tire turns more relative to outside tire with more toe out), but toe in at rear so outside tire trys to bring rear back in line with front - not stear away.

Am I missing something?

Willing to be educated,

Alan

 

Alan,

You are correct toe out in the rear WILL make the car more difficult to recover from oversteer. Problem is, with a very nose heavy front wheel drive car getting the rear to "come around" is VERY difficult.

Because in autocross the speeds are realitively slow and the turns are tight we generally like to "dial in" a little toe out (1/16-1/8) to get the car to rotate. At high speed this is something that you need to keep in mind but with small amounts of toe out the car isn't really that tail happy.

Mason

 

one more question:
Where is the 1/16" or 1/8" measured from, and why isn't it measured in degrees instead?
It seems like the 1/16" would result in a different wheel angle, depending on where it is measured. 1/16 eight inches from the hub will be a smaller than a 1/16 four inches from the hub. Sorry for my ignorance.

Mark

 

I go for as much toe out as I can on my Cooper (about 1/8" total) and leave it that way for street driving... if you want to go back to "stock" spec the paint mark will work... getting close is all that is needed in the rear.... so small canges from the paint marks will not be an issue.... sure things change a little as you tighten the bolts but not enough to mess things up that much... Front alignments are quite sensetive but the rear leaves a good bit of margin for error... All IMHO of course. Not sure on the torque spec on the 3 bolts so I just make sure they are good and snug and check them when I cange tires...

As for why toe out in the rear... in stock classes we cannot go to a huge rear bar to get the rear to rotate so we use the rear toe to minic a big rear bar... recovering from oversteer is not an issue as long as you do not lift or brake..LOL...

Please note when eaving lots of rear toe out for street driving much extra care is needed in the rain... Ie if you push it the rear will come out on you!!! same goes for those with a big rear sway bar!!

BTW I LOVE over-steer!!!

 

>>one more question:
>>Where is the 1/16" or 1/8" measured from, and why isn't it measured in degrees instead?
>>It seems like the 1/16" would result in a different wheel angle, depending on where it is measured. 1/16 eight inches from the hub will be a smaller than a 1/16 four inches from the hub. Sorry for my ignorance.
>>
>>Mark

I measure from as close to tire center as I can... I do not use degrees since I am only measuring total toe with a tape measure.. and do not want to convert to degrees... There is a way to do a full 4 wheel alignment at home with a nice flat garage.. it involves a perfect box arround the car,,(string lines) to serve as refrence so you can measure all your angles in degrees at the hub or rim.... there was a good article in GRM (grassroots motorsports) a while back on it..... I have done it before and it took FOREVER!!! but worked great!! So you are right using inces is not exact but if you always measure your own car at the same points you have one constant that does not change... repeatability is the goal here not having exact measures... so my 1/8" total toe out might not be the same as 1/8" toe out on the Teram MCO car depending on who and how the toe was measured....

 

Thanks Jason and Mason. I'm sure I'll have some more questions as I wrestle with the concept of doing it myself!

 

I run as much toe out in the rear as possible, and drive it daily since it's really such a small amount. Total of 42 seconds. It was done once by the alginment shop and I leave it there. I suggest the same.

As said earlier rear toe out HELPS bring the rear around and tracks better through fast sweepers. Pretty standard trick for most front wheel drive cars that suffer understeer.

Haven't tried front toe out yet. How much front toe can one get max on this rather rigid Cooper set up?

HSAugs

 

>>Haven't tried front toe out yet. How much front toe can one get max on this rather rigid Cooper set up?

Way more than you need....!!! Looks to me you can get enough front toe out to quickly erase front street tires... I would shoot for arround 1/8in out to start.... currently I am running 0 toe in the front..