My Mazdaspeed != Autocross car

Went with a friend of mine today to try and fix the "only" -.5 deg of camber in the front and found out a few things. First off, I have as much camber in front as I'll ever get without caster/camber plates. The strut has already been rotated. Having said that, we measured the camber. Driver's side has ALMOST 1 deg. That usually would be subject for excitement...but then we measured the passenger side. ~0 deg camber...maybe -.1 deg. I thought this car is SO far out of spec its not even funny, but I re-read the TSB. Factory spec SHOULD be -.57 deg camber +/- 1.0 deg. I don't know of a single other car company that was the loose of tolerance. Come oin, +/- 1 degree? .2 degree's is the difference between handling great and handling like crap. Any ideas?

This car will NEVER be an autocross car. The most I could ever hope for, even with camber plates, would be about a degree on the passenger side. CRAP

Have you taken the car to a professional alignment shop? I've never heard of one being that oddly setup at max camber. Most are able to get -1 degree from a good shop. A lazy shop might get about -.5 and just give up. Ground Control Camber plates can get you -4 if you want. Throw some bolts on and you can get -2.4 or so.

Have a pro shop do the work for you I say.

DistantTea said:

Have you taken the car to a professional alignment shop? I've never heard of one being that oddly setup at max camber. Most are able to get -1 degree from a good shop. A lazy shop might get about -.5 and just give up. Ground Control Camber plates can get you -4 if you want. Throw some bolts on and you can get -2.4 or so.

Have a pro shop do the work for you I say.

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Interesting. First off, let me say that we used a digital camber gauge to check this. The guy who was helping me out has been autocrossing for a VERY long time (20+ years) and I am very confident that our numbers are correct.

My question is this: What other adjustments are on the front of our cars? The strut top has been rotated correctly, and I've seem many cars with camber bolts before...they don't hold all that well and I want to avoid them at all costs. If I could get a degree out of both sides(in front), I'd be happy. But we looked all over the place and I couldn't see any adjustments for the front camber on the car. I guess I'm just used to my RX7, thats all.

For the front you have adjustments for Toe, Camber and Caster. A good pro shop (not golf) will be able to make all the minute adjustments that add up to the max camber.

Oh and I have no fear of Camber bolts... I've been running off the shelf bolts for a while and after and evo school of 65+ runs, 5 events and a few thousand miles my camber has remained steady. $40 for bolts or $300 for plates? Hmmmm

DistantTea said:

For the front you have adjustments for Toe, Camber and Caster. A good pro shop (not golf) will be able to make all the minute adjustments that add up to the max camber.

Oh and I have no fear of Camber bolts... I've been running off the shelf bolts for a while and after and evo school of 65+ runs, 5 events and a few thousand miles my camber has remained steady. $40 for bolts or $300 for plates? Hmmmm

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Very good point. I'm really not looking to seriously autocross this car...I have an RX7 for that...but its in peices right now(rebuilding the suspension as I have money) and I want to get some experience with FWD cars. So, I'm going to get an alignment and probably look into crash bolts. If I could get about 1.4 deg in front with no toe I'd think that would be just about perfect. We'll see.