Alignment is absolutely the most fun thing to play with on this car in order to fine tune the balance. :)

I'm running a nearly identical setup to @Calum ; -2.5 up front, -1.5 rear and 0 toe all around - and I'm similarly confident in recommending these settings as a baseline for an aggressively driven street car. I find the distribution of traction to be very neutral overall with plenty of front end grip on tap plus an ability to initiate rotation in the rear if you're super aggressive with your throttle lifts and/or steering inputs. Although it's a fairly aggressive setup it's not too rough in terms of tire wear, which is also nice.

Working from the above settings I find that simple toe adjustments are enough to be able to tweak the balance further, depending on my mood and preference:

- an extra half a degree of toe in (total) out back locks the rear end down a bit more.
- an extra half a degree (total) of toe out up front increases initial turn in response.

I'd suggest not looking into swaybars until you've completely exhausted all of your alignment options. That's not to say that swaybars are bad per say, just that the alignmen5 changes are really easy to notice and by far better bang for your buck.

On the topic of swaybars I'd be careful what you choose. I'm running the Hotchkis bars, which are very stiff compared to stock (over 200% stiffer at the softest settings). They're good match for full R compound rubber and even more aggressive alignment settings on a track but not so good on the street, with street tires and a less aggressive alignment. They do keep the car extremely flat but I get a lot of crosstalk on bumpy surfaces and the breakaway characteristics are very abrupt. I'll be swapping back to a much milder swaybar combo soon.

I'd actually recommend swaybars as an absolute last step in the 'mod chain' but that's just me. If you're super keen offense dialing in your car I'd speak to a pro and get them to recommend something tailored to the other parts already on your car and your own specific use cases.

A handy reference comparing different swaybars is here:
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...25&postcount=1

This reminds me of a youtube channel I was watching the other night, and a particular video. I think you might enjoy this, if nothing else it's food for thought. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhWZ57baTOw"]FCM Suspension Truth v2.6 - The Hidden Cost of Sway Bars - YouTube[/ame]

Disclaimer: I don't know enough to be critical of what he's saying, to me it was a compelling argument. That video also confirms some hypotheses I've held onto about sway bars, so there could be some confirmation bias.



Personally, I'm modding my car in an effort to mask my poor driving abilities. My goal is to make it so I can hold the car as close to the edge as possible, with some nod to decreasing the understeer that I found in steady state cornering. So, all of the mods I've done have been in an effort to increase; feedback, stability in mid corner bumps, and predictability when cornering forces overcome traction.

In that vein, I've been holding to the idea that I'll be staying with the stock sway bars. I've had a car that was grossly over barred, it was fun to a point, but the snap over steer was dangerous and kept me from using the car as much as I could. I might go to a wrx rear bar to change balance slightly, but I'm very satisfied with the balance as it sits.

Another thing to consider when upgrading sway bars is corner exit. I think increasing sway bar stiffness will reduce grip and thus the cars ability to accelerate out of a corner.

I'm sure there's compromises and balances to be found with all of this, things like upgrading the differential to combat the loss of grip from the sway bars.:iono:

@Calum if you're still understeering at -2.5 degrees camber up front try adding more, my car was the happiest it's ever been at the last autocross (so no corners above 40mph even) running about -3 degrees, I'm on stock everything else except tires (Z2SS OEM size).

Going to try -3.25 in a few weeks, it's not streetable, I adjust camber via my plates after arriving at the event and before leaving, I could feel the inside edge getting real hot after only a ~4 mile drive one day.

Andy, is that you trying to sell me a set of camber plates, again? /s

Honestly I'm really happy with the amount of understeer with this setup. It's very controllable and yet enough to keep to me out if trouble. But that is some good food for thought, I'm presently maxed out on camber though.

Haha, I had nothing to do with that I swear.

The FCM video series is good information. Keep in mind that he's talking about Miatas and that every car is different. I do think with Subarus in general a lot of people go too big on swaybars simply because it's a cheap and easy way to keep your car flat and huge bars are easily available.

There are many ways to get your car to rotate. What's important for most of us is finding the balance that maximizes the grip that you can confidently use. :)

- Andy

@Calum

I was looking into sways for AutoX, and in both the CS and STX thread, many are doing just a front sway and/or very very mild rears

I found going from -3.2 to -2.5 very noticable in terms of understeer on the track. I changed it for the winter because I'll be driving 2000 miles round trip from the NW to Sonoma and Laguna. Otherwise, for around town and 4 hrs round trip to the Ridge Motorsports park once or twice a month, I found -3.2 to be fine for inside wear as the tires wore out from track use before the inside wear was an issue. This is on Z2SS, NT01s, AD08Rs and RE11s.

So I might not be completely full of shit...:happyanim:

I don't have the luxury of a second set of wheels at the moment, my Z2SS have 12k miles on them at the moment and I believe should be good for another 3k-8k miles depending on how hard I run them, just rotated front to back and my fronts have noticeable inner and outer shoulder wear compared to the rears, I've driven them hard and easy at both a lot of camber and not enough camber.

:bellyroll:

I'm confident adjusting my plates on the fly that my toe change is minimal (totally unnoticeable from the butt dyno), hopefully sometime this winter I'll go through and generate some plots on the interdependance once I get some alignment tools so I've got data to back me up.

I was driving to work at ~2.5 degrees, ~4 miles and the inside edges were so hot they were uncomfortable to touch and the outside edges were ice cold, I went back down to my max positive that night.

Agreed, a couple thousand miles on the street is nothing compared to a hard track day, but at this point my tires are seeing at least a thousand miles between events, changing the camber is the least time intensive part of my setup (changing tire pressures takes longer, let alone brake pads) so I feel comfortable reccommending it.

I've never seen 2.5 degs wear unevenly. Are you sure you don't have a toe issue? That seems more likely.

Entirely possible, my only counter argument is my toe has been adjusted professionally 3 times now and the steering feel has never changed significantly. Going from -1.1 degree to -2.7 degrees camber and ~4 months between being on the rack including 4x autocrosses was still within factory spec, I'd have to go look at the sheet for exact numbers.

I was just wondering about toe too. I have -3.3 and zero toe, no heating like that on road trips for me. Also even enough wear... Very even wear on the race setup but that's just to/from events plus a few minutes of munching cones.

Also stock swaybars in STX, but hey...

I just measured and inspected. I've got about 2500-3000 Kms on this setup. (Revelent stuff; MPSS, 2.5 camber, and 5.5 degs caster, 0 toe). I'm down a 32 on the inside vs the outside, but there's no gum balling or anything that would indicate too much heat.

I'm not trying to flame, just trying to add info to the subject.

I think out of the box this car is great. I did notice my 13 stock FR-S tended to or was easier to slide around compared to my RS1.0, and the only difference between the two cars mechanically is the TRD springs as far as I know. Anybody know spring rate for the TRD's? Where's it better to start? Tires, Springs, or alignment? When it comes to chassis tuning. Not trying to thread jack. I cant wait to do some mountain driving with some sticky tires.