I recently finished the suspension on the 88 CRX I am preparing for ITA/PS-2 competition and now I am on the hunt for alignment settings. Before I take the car in to get the alignment done, I'd like to find out from others on what has worked for them. Specifically, I'm curious as to what caster and toe others have along with their camber settings. My setup consists of Koni single adjustables, 500f/700r springs, front radius rod bearings, rear 22mm ST sway, stock front sway (or maybe no sway), Prothane Bushings, Mugen trailing arm bushings. I would greatly appreciate anyones advice or comments.

 

Can't really change the caster, but around -2.5 to -3 camber for the front is good with around -2 for the back. Toe is more of a preference, but 0 for the rear and around 1/16th toe out for the front works well for us.

 

How do you change the camber on the CRX (other than lowering it more)?

On my RX-7, I run 0 toe front. Don't want to give up any speed on the straights. Maybe not an issue in an ITA car.

 

That's pretty much it... basically after putting on the suspension the car will be lowered and should have more negative camber. If lucky, the readings should fall to about those. On our car, there was almost -3.0 on the front right and only 2.5 on the front left. Wish they would be the other way around, but there's not much we could do about it.

 

Thank you for the input. I'm still debating on how I want to initially setup the toe. I am thinking about having it set at 0 toe front/rear to startout with. The car should be pretty tailhappy to start out with so I may just get used to the car and mess with the shock adjustments and sway bars first. Then if I feel a need for changes, Ill make them.

Hracer, what characteristics of the handling changed with the car set for 1/16th toe out up front? How much caster does your CRX have?

 

Actually I don't remember driving a crx before with 0 toe in the front or with some toe in, so I can't really say how it would be.. They always had at least some toe out. On one occasion I had to drive with a tad over 1/2 inch of front toe out in a qualifying session because we didn't have time to align it, and it wasn't much fun. But on a perfect day I (prefer) and always try to get somewhere between 1/16th, but not quite 1/8th toe out whenever we align it. I don't remember the caster readings, but they are on the last spec sheet if I find it. That's one thing that we never changed. (on purpose at least)

With an aggressive suspension setup on a crx (like what you seem to have), the car can be very fast in the turns at the expense of it being pretty twitchy. (It can also be slower if you can't get used to it that easily.) Basically I've noticed that the faster you drive a crx with a good setup, the less steering you'll be doing. You'll know you're going pretty quick when all it takes to make it through a corner is just a little initial steering input during turn in. The rest of the car then takes over and turns for you. But if you don't have a real tight grip on the little hyper beast's leash, it can turn around and bite you pretty darn fast even in normal conditions. (...and I've recently just noticed that it suddenly develops an amazing appetite if you accidentally make it step through OIL while asking it to turn.)

 

At least you CRX guys have a decent rear suspension.

Soft springs and a solid rear axle make for interesting handling characteristics.

Push push push, snap-oversteer, amazing save (again), push push push.

And that's with the rear swaybar installed and 20 year old rear bushings. It still binds, it still pushes, but boy is it fun when you get it right. RX-7s sure are quirky little cars.

 

Glad to hear we're not the only people with "quirky" cars that have an attitude.

 

Oversteer was my best friend at last weekend's autocross.. hehe..(spun it on the first run)

Dan
89 CRX CSP