Quote:
Lowering affects camber more than castor and castor issues are more than likely the cause of your heavy and unresponsive steering. Since castor is not normally adjustable on these cars, the factory values should give you a good starting point. My factory shop manual gives the castor angle as 2.25 degrees plus or minus 1 degree.
I've lowered my Toledo and a couple of Dolomites well below what is really practical, grounding the subframe and exhaust on every speed bump (and then raised them a bit, i'm not daft) and not run into castor issues from it whilst using stock (non adjustable) tiebars.
Toledo standard camber varies from 0.5 to 1.25 degrees POSITIVE depending on comm number. In my experience you can drop it to a couple of degrees or so negative without wrecking your tyres or grip.
HTH, Steve
Cheers Steve. Standard castor (2.25 +/- 1 degree) it is then - even lowered? Also - last time I went for parallel toe, I think this is correct too?
Hopefully current castor will be a way off as this car just isn't handling as I'd like it to. My dolly 1300 was so much better so I know it's capable of the same. The only thing I haven't done yet are subframe bushes but I really can't see that making
this much of a difference...
My car isn't that low (been there and done that with the japanese cars, got tired of seeing sparks coming ouit of the rear of my car going down the A34), but I have 70(?) profile tyres on so I guess that raises it up a bit off the floor. I don't really have any issues with speedbumps or Oxfordshire roads - my Fiesta ST is worse in that regard and that's totally standard!
Can't remember what camber values were on the last alignment - though it doesn't look too drastic by eye. Will report back after the car's been aligned.