Sorry, I just don't consider "unconventional" to be "ghetto". Would I be less ghetto if I'd trimmed and rolled my fenders instead? If you're at Thunder Hill on October 4th I'll be glad to give you a ride or even let you take a few laps to see if you think my car handles worse than it would with the typical -2/-1 and zero toe.

 

I think your wrong but not sure. The alignment machine(hunter) listed the stock alignment settings for the 04' wrx as -.5 front and -1.5 rear. I would say that you want less camber in the front than in the rear. I may be wrong though. i am sure there are some guru's like BAN that can tell why. I just wanted a little more in the front. i actually wanted about -1 - -1.2 but settled for -.9 because thats where it already was. I may have it changed later. The alignment was only $ 50 bucks so after a while i may have it changed. It handles really well right now so maybe not. I am running 0 toe, i am not crazy like BAN(hahaha).

 

Yes, I am crazy, haha. Nobody told me how stupid it was to spec all the toe out before I did it so I didn't know better. There was a great line about this in Dave Coleman's column in SCC right after I did it: "Toe-in in front makes the car stable but slow to turn in. Toe out in front helps turn-in. Toe-in in the reaqr helps stability. Toe out makes you crash."

Anyways, stock alignment settings suck. They are bases strictly on tire wear and stability (read as: poor handling). You definitely want more than .9 degrees up front, but 1.5 is a pretty good number for the rear. Some run less if they want the car a little easier to get loose. More camber in the front helps turn-in and ultimate grip in steady state cornering. More is better, up to around 2 degrees on street tires. I know a lot of autocrossers who like -2.5 degrees on Falken Azenis Sports up front.

 

The alignment should depend on how stiff your suspension is too. If you have gnarly sway bars in the back that tent to whip your tail out or cause a bit of oversteer, you could easily counter that by adding more negative camber in the back then the front. It all depends on weight balance and application. In most cases with more or less stock WRX, -2/-1 front/rear does make sense for racing, wouldn't want that on the street though.

 

UnlimitedLaps, but it will probably be all Subarus that day.

 

Adding toe out is tricky. I like my toe out frotn and rear setup, but others would be uncomfortable with the instability that brings. If you daily drive your car, I would recommend maybe 1/16" total toe out front and zero rear. If you want to be aggressive, add a touch of rear toe out. It will help the rear end come around faster.

Also, after 15k+ with 2+ degrees of camber and toe out front and rear, I haven't shown any uneven wear. A friend has told me the "cone theory": Using toe AND camber makes your tires cone shaped, and if you get the center of the "cone" horizontal to the ground and perpendicular to the steering axis, you get even wear. Might be some truth to that. (Or maybe I just scrubbed the outside shoulders enough to match the inside wear. )