I’m a little confused about how to find the perfect alignment for me. There’s a very good alignment shop in my area and I know that when I go there he’ll ask me how I drive, where I drive and how I would like the car to behave at the limit. This will help him formulate the right settings.

So that’s great but where I get confused is when it comes to my sway bars. I have the Whiteline adjustables and I understand how stiffness promotes over/understeer but how do you make it work together with the alignment? When I initially get my alignment do I want both swaybars on soft in order to start out neutral? Once I’ve had my alignment and I’m scooting around the track, if I decide that I want the car to behave differently will I tinker with the sways or tweak the alignment? How do I know when my alignment is lacking or when I need to tweak a swaybar?

I’ve read threads where people share their alignment specs but I couldn’t find information on how their specs correlate to swaybar stiffness.

Thanks

 

Really? No pearls of wisdom? I would have thought this would be a good question that people could learn from.

Maybe I should have posted it in Technical Discussion.

 

It's sometimes kind of hard to find what the right sway bar settings are the first time around. There are many other variables to car handling than just alignment and sway bars, like spring rate and shock dampening differences. Since your bars are adjustable and cheaper to adjust than alignment, I would personally go with an "all-around street" alignment with a -.5 bias to the rear (e.g. -1.0 front, -1.5 rear) then just continually adjust your sway bars from there.

Also, I'm not sure if it's just me, but I feel that the suspension and tires need to get used to new settings before handling feels settled. So after your alignment, drive for a while (like 1-2 weeks) for the car to "get used to it" before you adjust your bars.

 

^ Yep use the stock alignment.

 

Ok thanks. I thought I had this figured out a while ago and I wrote it down but now I'm not so sure.

Front
Swaybar on hard
-1.5 camber

Rear
Swaybar on soft
-1.0 camber

So with more negative camber in the front, when cornering the car would give up the rear before the front, but having the swaybar on hard and rear on soft would balance it out. Wouldn't it? That's what I'm trying to understand.

When I initially put my sways on I had them both on hard with stock alignment and I found I would oversteer too easily. I've since put the rear on soft but I haven't had a chance to really push it much to feel if the hard front was helping or hurting.