Alignment Race/ Street car

I’m looking for some advice, incite or things to conceder. My race/ street car is just about finished getting built. I have replaced just about every suspension part and added other parts that are adjustable. Car will need an alignment and I was wondering how to go about this? Do I just drop the car off and tell them I want an alignment and have them look up a stock 94 Honda civic or do I tell them what I want? If the second what do I want? More to it is I want the car as low as I can get it but also keep drivability and high enough that I wont have issues loading and unloading this on the car trailer. Then what about my traction bars?

I don’t know a thing about this subject so take it easy on me.

I just aligned my BMW in my garage with a tape measure and a level.

Height you’re going to need to figure out before you go in. If you change the height of the car it will affect the alignment, so you need to figure that out before you take it in.

Traction bars is also something you’re going to need to adjust yourself.

The only thing the shop is going to align is your tow, caster, and camber settings.

As for what to set things to, I’m not sure. Factory is always a good balance between performance and tire wear. On my Firebird I got some recommended settings from a well known professional road-racer, and just took it to a shop and asked to have them use these settings instead of factory.

fuck yeah we did

I think it really depends on what your plans are. If you just wanna drive it for now and finish sorting out bugs, Id just set it to a resonalbe height (remember lower doenst mean better) and have a stock alignment done. Then you can tweak things as you move forward with the project.

Also how you align it will depend on what sort of racing you plan on doing and what your preferences are.

Personally Id think a decent place to start, if you want to go beyond a stock alignment, would be something like

Front
-1.5 deg camber, 1/8" total toe out (this should help the car turn in some, if you are interested in that)

Rear
Stock camber, 0 toe

This may not apply at all to a Honda, its just somethign I have done on my VWs and the cavy previously. :shrug:

Dan

what types of racing at what speeds? What spring rates are you running? as well as sway bar setup?

Racecartech from CanAlignment on SON sets up race suspensions if you wanna ask a professional.

His profile:

http://www.nyspeed.com/member.php?14582-racecartech

Thanks for all the input guys. My first priority is making sure its aligned good enough for the dyno. I think I have the car at a good height as it sits but haven’t had it on the trailer yet. Not sure about the spring rates, that’s something I do need to look into once I get this going. So drag racing, 1/4 mile and some street driving but not very often, looking for 11’s or better, probably around 120 to 140mph as a guess? No sway bars. The Dunn tire down here charges 60 bucks so I just thought I would try to get the most out of my buck. I did look up the poor mans alignment using string and all that but for all the time and not knowing what Im doing Id rather pay the 60.

So set the height where I want, adjust the traction bars and have them do a stock alignment, at least for now?

That sounds like a good plan for a drag car to start. You can fine tune things later when everything else is working perfectly.

For example, you may want to set camber and toe with the front raised some, to simulate the car lifting at launch (IF it does).

Dan

you should be fine with height on the dyno no matter how slammed you are

i had -2.5f -1.5r on my teg and it handled awesome, everything else was set to factory integra type r settings lol. siq!!

thats probably kind of drastic for shrek tho
-1.5, -1… integra type r everything else!! lol

im doing my talon as close to zero as possible with slight rear toe out. (awd tho)
neeedz tracktion

well if it’s a drag car, you may want to get everything as close to zero as possible as far as toe and camber go (maybe like 1/32 toe-in in the front so its super tame). For springs, super stiff in the rear and I’d highly suggest traction bars or something to help preload the front.

stay away from super stiff rear springs if you want to use it as a daily or on the street at all

i would contact ground control from spring rates and they can set you up just fine

as far as an alignment goes i would go with an itr “spec” alignment

why no sway bars? Be careful of dropping the car very much without a camber kit, a bunch of negative camber in the front will hurt your straight line traction. If you have adjustable coilovers you can jack up the rear a little bit higher than the front and that should help, how stiff are your springs? If you have seriously stiff locomotive springs then you need a shock that can control them, because if you dont, youll have the dreaded bounce and the handling wont be as good as it should be, so just keep that in mind because alot of cheap coilover springs for hondas are like 500lb/in springs

That’s not a bad idea!

Well I never got sway bars b/c I didn’t think I needed them for going straight? Like I said I don’t know much about this subject. But Im ready to learn! I don’t want to drop the car to much, like I said I want to be able to load and off loan this car quick and easy. I do want the car to sit lower then stock. I have ground control coil over’s but don’t know exactly what they are, the shocks are adjustable. I have the paperwork at home.

6 point roll bar
BLOX rear camber kit
Lakewood traction bars
KYB AGX shocks
Ground control coil overs

Well here is what I have, basically stock with some adjustability.

There is a stiffening bar that I can get for in front of the steering rack. Is that worth anything to me?

ground controls will be fine, they are quite a bit stiffer than stock but they arent crazy. Me personally, I would run sway bars because ive felt cars without them and didnt care for the feel without them esp in the front. It was pretty noticeable to me, it should be a cheap bolt on even with stock parts, so I would run them, esp in the front.

Any recommendations on a front sway bar? Would I need to get different lower control arms?