More camber up front?

[Mustangcol]

I am planning to do a class at the track in December. My mustang has a bunch of mods (in the signature). So I'm fine tuning the car and testing it out in the mountains here. There is 1 turn, right hand turn going downhill that the front left tire makes a hard scrubbing noise. I believe this is the beginning of understeer and I should be looking for more negative camber. My alignment specs are as follows:

Front Caster, 7.4° left, 7.6° right
Front Camber, -1.6° left, -1.3° right
Front Tow, 0.10° left, 0.10° right

Rear Camber, -1.7° left, -1.5° right
Rear Tow, 0.15° left, 0.15° right

Should I get camber bolts up front and go more negative? I have my BMR rear bar set to the lightest so I have some adjustment there, but I think camber would be more helpful in this case. I've also thought about putting godspeed camber arms and J&M vertical links in the rear and do the alignment in 1 shot. but I'm not sure if it will have excessive NVH or it's worth it. The car handles great for my needs.

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[John S]

Cam bolts can work but the base fastener is a smaller diameter and limited in range. Do it right and slip in a pair of camber plates. There are plenty of options to choose from and you'll get simple adjustments with more range for both caster and and camber.

 

[luc]

I am planning to do a class at the track in December. My mustang has a bunch of mods (in the signature). So I'm fine tuning the car and testing it out in the mountains here. There is 1 turn, right hand turn going downhill that the front left tire makes a hard scrubbing noise. I believe this is the beginning of understeer and I should be looking for more negative camber. My alignment specs are as follows:

Front Caster, 7.4° left, 7.6° right
Front Camber, -1.6° left, -1.3° right
Front Tow, 0.10° left, 0.10° right

Rear Camber, -1.7° left, -1.5° right
Rear Tow, 0.15° left, 0.15° right

Should I get camber bolts up front and go more negative? I have my BMR rear bar set to the lightest so I have some adjustment there, but I think camber would be more helpful in this case. I've also thought about putting godspeed camber arms and J&M vertical links in the rear and do the alignment in 1 shot. but I'm not sure if it will have excessive NVH or it's worth it. The car handles great for my needs.

If it is your first time on a race track, don’t worry about your car. The limiting factor is going to be you, the driver, not the car
Learn the lines apexes, braking markers, flags, etc

 

[Journey GT 435]

Anyone else have trouble with your car popping out of second gear? MT82

 

[Journey GT 435]

It never did it before mods and tune.

 

[Journey GT 435]

Myself, I think it needs an upgrade to the shifter.

 

[Grintch]

If it is your first time on a race track, don’t worry about your car. The limiting factor is going to be you, the driver, not the car
Learn the lines apexes, braking markers, flags, etc

Well at my first track day I blistered a pretty new set of front Pilot Super Sports. I had just put the Track Pack on and silly me though that made it track ready. I suspect that based on your current mods you are not planning on driving around at 8/10th just happy you can go kinda fast without having to worry about getting a ticket. Now if it was stock tires and stock suspension, I would be more inclined to agree with Luc. Though your stock brakes might hold you back enough...

If you plan to do more than the one track day, adding camber plates is a must to get decent tire life. Tires are expensive enough already. I like the Steeda plates for their bang for the buck.

 

[Mustangcol]

Well at my first track day I blistered a pretty new set of front Pilot Super Sports. I had just put the Track Pack on and silly me though that made it track ready. I suspect that based on your current mods you are not planning on driving around at 8/10th just happy you can go kinda fast without having to worry about getting a ticket. Now if it was stock tires and stock suspension, I would be more inclined to agree with Luc. Though your stock brakes might hold you back enough...

If you plan to do more than the one track day, adding camber plates is a must to get decent tire life. Tires are expensive enough already. I like the Steeda plates for their bang for the buck.

I went with BMR camber bolts to keep my spending down. After looking at my alignment specs, they went really toe-in on the front and rear, like they didn't understand that I said TOTAL 0.10 front and TOTAL 0.15 rear and instead did 0.10 and 0.15 each side.

Saturday I am going to watch them do the alignment and try to get -2 front camber, 0.10 total front toe, try to match the rear camber to -1.5, and go 0.15 total toe on the rear.

I have new brembo calipers, pads, and rotors so that won't limit me. I have to fix the splitter support rods and bolt them to the crash bar. and I ordered brake ducts from FS performance engineering to keep the brake temps down. I think the Powerstop Z23 pads will be fine for a first track day. I had them flush the system and put Motul RBF600 so that will help.

 

[Mustangcol]

It's a long way to the track. Like 50% of it curvy mountain roads. Then go to the town where my gf grew up. 345 miles round trip. Would a -2 camber wear down the tires badly? My tires are TW300 falken fk510 285/35r19

 

[luc]

It's a long way to the track. Like 50% of it curvy mountain roads. Then go to the town where my gf grew up. 345 miles round trip. Would a -2 camber wear down the tires badly? My tires are TW300 falken fk510 285/35r19

Camber do not wear tires, toes does

 

[Mustangcol]

I got the camber bolts in yesterday then tried alignment. I have GT350 springs and maxed out camber front is -1.4, maxed out camber rear is -0.1. I did toe as 0.1 total on front, 0.2 total on rear. But I'm surprised that we couldn't get more camber. The last time I did alignment, on the rear we had -1.4 and -1.6. The alignment range on the front BMR camber bolts was -0.8 to -1.4

I think that I need to try another alignment rack, something doesn't seem right to me. Visually, it looks like a ton of negative camber on all 4.

 

[Grintch]

IIRC the stock GT alignment settings is like -1.5 F, -1.0 R. Or maybe that was the Track Pack recommended numbers.

With front camber plates I was at -2.5 F and -2 R and still wearing the outer edges more on track (thus tend to agree with the -3 F recommendation for track use, but that generally requires opening up the strut hole). But the key comparison is I got almost double (or 20x, was that -0.1 supposed to be -1.0) the rear camber as you without any real change in hardware (the TP springs might be a little lower than the GT350 springs which would help a little).

So yeah, something looks off.

 

[Mustangcol]

IIRC the stock GT alignment settings is like -1.5 F, -1.0 R. Or maybe that was the Track Pack recommended numbers.

With front camber plates I was at -2.5 F and -2 R and still wearing the outer edges more on track (thus tend to agree with the -3 F recommendation for track use, but that generally requires opening up the strut hole). But the key comparison is I got almost double the rear camber as you without any real change in hardware (the TP springs might be a little lower than the GT350 springs which would help a little).

So yeah, something looks off.

I called BMR today and he said to look that the pin on the bolt is aligned with the cam bolt. And that 0.6 degrees of adjustment means something is off. I will take it to another shop when I have time.

And why I can only get -1.1 in the rear is a mystery to me, when the last alignment was -1.6
I did see the guy roll the car back and forth and bounce the suspension up and down. I also checked that the alignment tool was touching the tire at the 3 points. Fortunately in the country where I live, they dont care if the customer goes in the shop haha. I lined up the camber bolts and handed it to the guy and told him it needs to be installed in that orientation. Maybe he let it slip before he installed it.

 

[Mustangcol]

I took it to another shop and explained whats happening. I don't think the guy tried indexing the camber bolt again because it came out the same front camber. I'm losing my patience and maybe just going to get the godspeed ak-242 camber arms and BMR camber plates. I noticed yesterday that I'm starting to scrub the outside of the front tires with the current camber.

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