Tamago's guide to ultimate yaris handling

[Loren]

It is SO rare to see someone get all the details right for a change. Kudos!

I would add that alignment is a very personal thing, and that if you're searching for performance outside of the "stock alignment" envelope, you're going to have to experiment. What works for someone else might not work for you because even if the car is identical, the driving style might not be.

I've been running 2.5-2.8 degrees of negative camber in the front with no tire wear issues, FWIW. And my experience was that zero front toe made the car wander far too much for my tastes, so I ended up going with about 1/16" of toe-in.

I haven't messed with the rear alignment on my Yaris, but I did on my old Saturn. (which was factory-adjustable for camber and toe, unlike the Yaris) Be VERY careful with rear toe-out. A little bit goes a LONG way. About the smallest amount of toe-out that you can measure (1/32-1/16" maybe?) will be enough to make the car feel like the rear is steering around a sweeping turn. The yaw angle will feel just like you're about to lose the back end, it's freaky!

Lastly, I'm not sure I like the idea of using washers to adjust the rear alignment. I've seen a lengthy engineer's discussion on why wheels that use conical lugs are not hubcentric (and thus don't need those silly plastic spacers that don't do anything, anyway... but, I'll try not to digress). What it comes down to is that the lugs hold the wheel against the hub. The lugs themselves can't and won't support the weight of the car! It's the friction between the wheel and the hub (held in place by the meager torque of the lugs) that supports the weight of the car. I can't help but think that the hub-to-axle interface works the same way. By sticking a washer in there, you're eliminating the large friction area that's supporting the hub and putting most of the stress on the bolts, which weren't designed to handle it. I think the proper solution here would be a machined alignment shim that will cover the whole friction area of the hub/axle joint and maintain the friction that is meant to support the hub.

Probably the biggest thing that anyone who's serious about suspension tuning should take away from this is far simpler, however: "too low" and "too stiff" are very real possibilities and can hurt your handling far more than they help it!