I lowered my car about .5 inches or so (mazdaspeed springs) and got nothing in the way of additional camber. Same -1.3 I was getting stock on the fronts. Rears are fine, I have plenty of room to work with.

The alignment tech told me that due to the suspension design of the 8, lowering the car won't really get you more camber. He suggested adjustable control arms, but I saw someone mention pollowball mounts in this thread. Could someone please explain my options for more front camber on an STU car?

 

You should be getting more. I think you might have too much caster.

 

The tech is wrong. The RX-8 has a generous camber curve.

0.5" isn't much. Did you verify the ride height change with a measurement or are you assuming the car is lowered by what the manufacturer said?

 

Have anyone tried toe OUT at the front?

 

i'm thinking we need a 'target alignment roll call' thread where ppl chime in with their alignment, list any suspension mods, and where they had the alignment done so we can build up some data (unless i just don't know where this info is...) about quantifying repeatable (if possible) settings.

a good tech is key obviously, but i'm still having a hard time understanding how/why there's such a wide range of negative front camber available from 8 to 8.

 

You have two big issues with this. First alignment racks are like dynos, they are not all created equal. There can be a big difference between the guy that does it by hand at the track with a bubble gage and a high end 3d laser jig. Some of the old school rigs lift the car up to do roll out in the air and the never get the static numbers right because of suspension bind.
Second is almost every grease monkey at the alignment shop has zero clue how to set a car up for the track and has no idea what happens once he leaves the green zone on his screen.
The only way to get a race setup is to go to a shop that sets up race cars or find an alignment tech that will do what you tell him and make sure you know what you are talking about.
In 12 years of racing I have used two alignment shops. Neither one of them had any experience with setting up race cars, but they were both had top level equipment and were willing do to exactly what I asked no matter how crazy they thought it was. Now they get it and have no problem setting up other cars.

 

Care to share your B stock national champion alignment specs? I'm bone stock now but plan on retaining the stock springs and going to some OTS koni's soon.

I'm thinking -1.3 camber both sides, 0 toe up front, around 6 caster
-1.5 or whatever you can max it out to and slight toe in (1/16"th of an inch per side?) Does that sound right?

 

If you do a search you can find the setup I ran last year on here.... Your setup sounds good except take out all the caster and you will gain more -camber in the front.

 

i dunno i just do alignment myself. after the m coupe and using camber bolts and only getting .3 degrees out of that car, aligning the rx8 was pretty easy. to measure the camber/toeout i use strings tied to jackstands, since they arn't digital they cant lie! =)

 

I think Shinronin had brillant idea there - a collection that their review. Try them all out and choose your own style.

 

Take out all the caster meaning maybe -1.7 front camber and 4 caster instead? What does the factory setup limit you to when swapping caster for camber and vice versa?

 

For about every 1 degree of caster you give up you will gain about .1 -camber. So to go from 6 to 4 on caster you will gain you about .2 -camber, not much but it is worth it.