[Biturbos4] Tires and alignment

[Robert Cheng]

You've misread.  The factory spec is a small amount of toe-in.  Toe-in gives
you straight line stability, meaning a less twitchy/sensitive steering
wheel.  As you get rid of this toe-in, and especially as you start to
toe-OUT, your steering and turn-in response increases at the expense of
straight line stability.

One thing that's been mentioned by the guy who does my alignments is that
the suspension design is such that the toe dynamically changes with changes
in the load.  Or in other words, as the suspension compresses, the toe is
changing quite a bit.

--Rob

> -----Original Message-----
> From: biturbos4-bounces at www.audifans.com 
> [mailto:biturbos4-bounces at www.audifans.com] On Behalf Of Grant
> Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 7:24 AM
> To: Chris Newbold
> Cc: Biturbos4 at audifans.com
> Subject: Re: [Biturbos4] Tires and alignment
> 
> The alignment advice is intriguing ...
> but why then did Audi spec it with the toe-out in the first place?
> There must be some penalty....
> Thanks,
> 
> Grant
> 
> On Mar 18, 2005, at 11:42 PM, Chris Newbold wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 19:52 -0500, Grant wrote:
> >
> >> Audi familiarity, from what I could see, was irrelevant.  Thrust 
> >> lines are thrust lines, and degrees are degrees.
> >
> > Yes, but the multi-link suspension is pretty tricky to line up. You 
> > have to know the proper order in which to make each adjustment 
> > otherwise you just end up going in circles, undoing 
> everything you've 
> > done so far.
> >
> > I've seen plenty of shops that take one look at all the arms under 
> > there and just throw up their hands.
> >
> > You also want to find people who know how to set these cars up to 
> > handle well, not just set them to factory specs. For example, you 
> > should dial all of the toe-in out of the rear and dial much 
> of it out 
> > of the front too. Does wonders for transitional response...
> >
> > --
> > Chris Newbold <chris at newbold.org>
> > 2001.5 S4 Avant
> >
> 
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