Miata Mailing List: June 1993, Message #27
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   From: Al Jenab 
Subject: RE>Further Adventures of the Porsche-Eating Miata
   Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1993 11:53:16 -0400



Fellow Miata Worshippers,

I had a request to comment to the group on the street behavior of the new
alignement settings:

absolute zero toe front & rear, max front caster (3.7 and 4.1, L & R) , -.9
deg front camber, -1.1 degree rear camber.

Well, the same overall comments apply. The car is now
more neutral and predictable. More grip, control, and stability through
corners and over bumps. It feels more firmly planted to the road, with no
perceptible increase in steering effort (I am ashamed to admit I have
power steering, though. Might rip it out like the Miata mag says.).
Generally a more solid feel all around. Less darty. One big improvement
seems to be a lessening of the dreaded "65 mph vibration". There's a very
twisty and hilly bit of backwoods road I seem to mysteriously find
myself on every morning and evening going to and from work. When
cresting a few of the hills at even moderate speed (35 mph), the car used
to get very light and the back end would come around. All in good fun, of
course, but stuff like that limits speed in the best situations and wraps
one around trees in the worst. It doesn't do that anymore; I would have to
increase my speed a lot now to get the back end out. Probably the extra
negative camber helps to keep the tires flat on the road when the rear end
gets light. It just tracks neutrally through the corner, no fuss. Which is

good, I guess.

The only potential drawback might be some increased wear on the inner
edges of the tires from the negative camber, but then it would be my
solemn duty to figure out a clever way to evenly wear out the outside
edges. Probably a judicious half-hour at the track would take care of it.

-Al