Probably the most simple and cheap mod, but the most neglected on any car. I wanted to get some advice on what settings would suit fast road driving and why the inside edges of my tyres were wearing well before the rest. I took my car to CLCM in Edinburgh as they have the equipment necessary to allow laser alignment on all 4 wheels.
I read loads of advice on settings on Scoobynet and 22b.com and a lot of people recommended some Prodrive settings. I also did some reading on the net and what all the terms such as Camber, Castor, Toe actually meant.
So, I went along thinking I'll just hand the garage a note of the Prodrive settings and that will be that. Prodrive recommend changing camber and toe on a classic Impreza. Unfortunately rear camber can't be changed from the factory setting without adding some adjustable camber bolts.
Here are the Prodrive settings:-
Front
Rear
Camber
Max -ve Equal
non adjustable
Toe
1mm toe-in
1mm toe-in
Unfortunately, once on the ramp the garage told me I was already running close to these settings and the toe-in was the direct cause of my uneven tyre wear given my majority of driving. They said if the car was driven hard everywhere, then the static toe-in wouldn't be as much of a problem as it would be constantly changing through the travel of the suspension. On motorway cruising however, the suspension is compressed often enough so it's more likely to maintain the toe-in and scrub the inside edges of the tyre.
The garage recommended running 0 toe front and rear, but increasing camber to match Prodrives. So far I'm happy with the settings and some of the floaty feeling has reduced, especially on my daily motorway commute.
I suspect that my suspension is getting a bit tired now that the car has covered around 65K miles. I have plans to replace the dampers and Eibach springs so more of that to follow.
