steves ls6

My car is finally done I'm picking it up friday. I need an alignment before I pick it up anyone have any specs they can suggest? My suspension is all stock.


I did a search btw.

MN_V

iTrader: (5)

Top of the list in a google search for cts-v alignment

http://www.cadillacfaq.com/faq/answers/alignment.html

Becker

iTrader: (4)

Yea Fuzzy has posted some good knowledge on this but I cant seem to find it at the moment. There is also some good info on Caddy FAQ

steves ls6

I saw this anyone have any experience with these settings?

Fuzzy_Wuzzy

iTrader: (8)

What are your plans for the car?

Either stock or aggressive street seems to be good for daily driving.

I have added more camber to mine but that is primarily to keep the outside edge of my autox tires from wearing out first. I don't think it is worth adding a lot of camber for a street driven car, unless you like buying tires

incubusjunkie614

iTrader: (1)

With my current setup (KW's, bushings, sways) I run just over -2 degrees of camber all the way around. I was able to get over 8 degrees of caster in the front, steering is fantastic, car tracks well and the car overall feels much better. I would run 1/16" total toe in on the rear or roughly 10minutes, depending on the system. Front toe I would aim for zero or slightly outward, 1/32" total outward. I would like more camber, but it is a street car, and I hate paying for tires

Bio248

i always liked running 0 toe all around and about -1.5* of camber all around, adding in a little more if needed to clear tires or wheels.

typically anything under -3* of camber won't affect wear too badly unless you're driving around super soft tires or driving in a straight line for the life of them. that is, if your toe is zeroed out. toe is the main reason you'll shred tires.

garrettg

iTrader: (1)

0 toe in the rear? I would think the rear axle could start steering the car with no toe. Have you tried this with the V and rear was under control?

ryridesmotox

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

steves ls6

I told him that if I didn't get back to him by last night to just add some extra camber. Buy the time I called him this morning it was done. So I guess I'll see how it ended up.

Bio248

i have not, i'm still on stock suspension and alignment until i can get coilovers on the car. i ran that kind of alignment on a subaru with no ill effects, but the suspension and drivetrain is completely different.

however, i wouldn't think having a 1/16" of toe all around would be bad. i don't like how the car feels with toe out in the front, too twitchy, so i prefer toe in all around to keep everything tracking straight.

i think these specs for aggressive street are a bit modest in the camber area:

i'd think bumping the front to at least -1.5* and the rear to -2.0* would be ideal. a little less toe in the rear to keep the tires from getting choppy, too.

kyle242gt

Funny to see this, I'm getting mine aligned next week and found the CTSV faq straight away.

I'm going with the track alignment, or as close as my guy can get it. Track days are hard on the outer front edges.

AAIIIC

iTrader: (19)

While you certainly can run more negative camber than that, for a street alignment (even an "aggressive" street alignment) there really isn't any need to since the double wishbone suspension doesn't have the camber gain issues of a MacP strut setup. I ran that "aggressive street" alignment for my initial track days in the V on street tires and didn't have any issues at all.

I somehow managed to pretty much destroy my front tires in the past 6000mi or so due to toe wear. I'll have to post the pics when I get home - the wear is what I'm used to seeing with toe out, but I had the car aligned with a bit of toe in just prior to putting these tires on, so I'm a bit mystified. (The tires were not new when they went on a couple/few months ago - these were the same Continental DWs I was running last year. The rears were down to the wear bars, so I bought new rears. The fronts still had plenty of good tread, and I don't recall there being any abnormal/uneven wear.) I need to get it back on an alignment rack and figure out what the story is so I don't screw up the replacement set of tires, too.

Bio248

i feel like you could fit a little bigger wheel/tire with the help of camber. i know this isn't a common practice among the domestic crowd, but it's always a quick way to make things work without having to do a bunch of fender work in the process. another degree of negative camber goes a long way.

however, that being said...i probably won't need to run anything more than a typical street alignment at any point with this car since i don't track it and don't plan to run overly large wheel/tire combos.

kyle242gt

FWIW, I got 1.64 and 1.72 front camber, rear was 2.2 no problem.

no moa

So i'm guessing i have to much toe out? Its only on the drivers side to, the pass side is not bad at all.

I also need to align, new tires go on next week.

ls1247

iTrader: (2)

Because the front tires work in unison to steer the car, toe is shared equally between them and is self centering as the car is going down the road.

This isn't the case on the rear because the tires are isolated from one another.

I can honestly say that I've aligned 1000 vehicles in my lengthy time as a mechanic and based on that, I have the following generalization about vehicle alignment.

1. Any vehicle I ever worked on that had alignment specs that varied beyond a degree from 0 camber, wore tires unevenly. This mostly applied to Porsches and Toyota MR2s but its simple physics really. If the tire isn't flat on the ground, it isn't going to wear flat. Now you may be able to mask this on the rear of a CTS-V because torque is doing most of the tire wearing and maybe I'm wrong about this particular car, but the above is an observation I've made after being forced to think about it everyday.

2. Because there is play in the vehicles suspension and steering systems, alignment specs are constantly changing in conjunction with the camber curves mentioned earlier.

What does this mean? I could align a car to one set of specs, drive it around the parking lot, re-shoot it and get something slightly different. In other words, these numbers are too precise for the real world and if I spent and hour getting your car set up to the exacting numbers I'm seeing above, I could drive up and down the road a few times and the chances are I 'd see something a little different when I put it back on the rack.

These numbers are base lines at best on a car that has rubber bushings, conventional tie rods and wheel bearing assemblies with any wear in them at all. You set it for a tiny bit of toe out and you may not be realizing that on the street unless you found the dead center of all the wear points on the suspension when you're aligning it and I've never had any luck doing that....take all this precision with a grain of salt.

Start going to Heim joints, the SKF bearings and poly bushings, you start getting a little closer to being precise but even then, without play, the suspension won't move and the steering won't steer.

3. Adjusting caster doesn't affect camber if you're doing it right.

Andringa

I understand what you are saying, but you have to take into account how the vehicle is being driven. Street, autocross, track, 1/4 mile all cause different tire wear. Running a lot of camber on the street will wear out the inside of the tire faster, but autocross or track time will wear out the outside edge faster. You need to find an alignment that is a good balance based on how you drive.

With just a bit more than 1.5 degrees of camber front/rear on my last set of tires, they wore perfectly inside vs. outside edges. But I had a mix of street, autox and 1 track day which helped to even out the wear.

I've heard that R-compound tires will commonly cord the outside edge if they don't get enough negative camber. (I've read that they wear best at 2+ degrees.)

ls1247

iTrader: (2)

Agreed

jmilz28

iTrader: (13)

I'm on stock suspension with some poly in the rear. I would call the driving "assertive street." Anyone have any suggestions beyond what is at cadillacfaq?