Subaru Alignments.. What does it take to make this car turn?

Hey!... Welcome to #modmonday and today we are talking about alignments! A proper alignment helps your car handles well, won't cause improper tire wear, and can help you get the highest mpgs. 

While power is important to get a car from point A to point B… a great alignment is just as necessary. A great setup and quality suspension can easily beat out a higher horsepower car on the auto-x course/track.

New setup! Time to get it all dialed in!

Adding a catalog of suspension upgrades won't make that much a difference without an alignment to properly utilize them in harmony and really make the car drive well and corner hard. When ever your replace a suspension you should get the alignment checked, as most likely it is no longer in specification. 

Red means bad but not always… If you are trying to handle than you might want more than the manufacturer thinks is proper.

Being green is good, but there is sometimes room for improvement.

As endless car setups exist, the same is true for alignments. Most of my Subaru alignment knowledge is heavily based on GD and SG chassis's, It can be a guideline to most MacPherson based suspension cars.  My first alignment was stock specs to get a good idea of the factory numbers and what it could use to improve and I would tell you do the same.

My second alignment for the STi was changing the front camber -1.5 rear camber -1.8 and 0 toe all around. This is a very good setup to keep tire wear in good shape and enjoy the improved turn-in and cornering. This is on stock suspension from the Sti.

Slotted rear coilovers helps get a bit more camber in either direction.

Upper adjustable cam plates will help you dial in that camber.

Next after a full suspension overhaul. I moved front camber to -2.2 and left the rear alone. 0 toe. I was still daily driving this setup and now auto-x'ing as much as possible. I was not seeing excessive tire wear from camber but I was using 200 tread wear tires. You can see some tramlining from this setup. This is a quite neutral setup for the auto-x course and the backend of the car will happily follow the front giving it an excellent feeling through turns.

Sometimes the factory adjusters no longer work and you need to replace it for something with a bit more of adjustment.

I have added even further camber to my STi as it has become more of a weekend car/auto-x car. Which will probably be a bit much for most street driven cars. With just a tad over -3.5 camber up front, zero toe all around and a bit more negative camber in the rear too. This setup has been excellent and I am not really sure where to go from here.

This is the madness that keeps my car glued to the road on the auto-x course. Not the best for tire life but it is a give and take part of racing.

Questions, comments, thoughts? Leave them below! Happy to help you with your setups!