I'm getting new tires tomorrow and would like to get an alignment as well. I mostly do street driving and canyon carving and wanted to get some opinions for the resident suspension gurus. The car handles great IMO but I do detect understeer at times. Will these ROW performance settings help at all or do you have your own suspension JUJU you can share. I'm driving a stock 2006 C2.
thank you and I hope you all are enjoying the holidays.

 

You'll find different opinions on this, but my personal feeling is that nothing you can do with stock suspension will do anything about understeer at road speeds. All you can do is make the car use up tires faster. When I drive it on the track, the cure for understeer is driving style, not adjustments. When I grab it by the scruff of the neck and treat it like a race car, my Carrera responds that way and the understeer goes away without fiddling with the suspension. Balances on the throttle like a proper race car.

I might find more tire wear driving on track in that style with stock settings, and I certainly could find another few percent of total grip if I had race settings, but ... well, two buts really. First, I don't drive enough miles on track to matter to the overall tire wear. Second, the stock suspension can't be adjusted to race settings. You need aftermarket suspension parts or GT3 parts and then the car will go through another set of performance tires on each trip to supermarket with those settings. (Well, maybe not that bad, but race settings really are not suitable for road use.)

Personally, after each trip to the track I decide I could pick up a tenth or maybe two by shoving the stock suspension out to its limits in the direction of race camber settings and so forth. Then I drive home and wonder which lap was so perfect that I couldn't find another tenth more easily by improving my skill level and still keep the car comfortable the other 360 days per year.

Bottom line: I run stock suspension parts and recommended settings, including the cross-camber to deal with crowned roads. This is my daily driver and a couple of hundred laps a year on track aren't worth screwing it up.

Gary

 

+1

Well said that man!

 

I had my C2S lowered to ROW height, and had the ROW performance alignment on my car. Tire wear on the track and the street was even across the tires.

My car handled really well, very well balanced, but I did have Dampronics and H&R Sway Bars on it.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone..."Grabby by the scruff of the neck" is so true. I take it that my car need to be at ROW height to take advantage of the ROW specs. I think leaving it the way it is may be the best approach now. At least that way I'll be able to compare the Contis I have on now to the Michelins.