You should be - they tell you everything you need to know about what alignment to use and tire pressures.
@tezzasaurusrex@PointByPatrol @johnloov
Yo lads!
Yes, I drive exclusively in pedal dance as I don't want any assists except for ABS to be active in any of my cars. I however have never done a back to back lap time comparison between the modes, I just like what I like.
In regards to wheel alignments, I set every car I touch (both myself and all of my customers vehicles) between zero to +1mm total toe in on the front axle.
The rear I run +1mm total toe in.
Camber is set to the customer's driving ability, usually between -3 to -4° on track going cars. Rear about half of what the front camber is set to generally works well, there are some exceptions like mid engined cars that tend to like more rear camber as there's more latitudinal load transfer.
The reason I don't follow conventional wisdom in respect to front toe out is because of the following reasons:
1. Heat. Almost every production vehicle I've worked on exhibits a frontal toe out curve under bump travel, that means that when the front suspension compresses while braking, the front axle develops toe out. So if static toe out is set to say 1-2mm, then by the time the car is under full braking force, the toe out has actually reached 3-4mm. Which is likely too much, generating unnecessary slip angle on the tyres, and excessive heat. On a fwd car, on a dry track, heat in the front tyres is the absolute enemy. We want to reduce this as much as possible.
2. Ackerman angle, and optimum slip angle to generate maximum grip. So all production cars have something called Ackerman steering geometry. This is essentially the inside wheel turns more than the outside wheel at a given steering angle so that the differing turning arcs of the outside and inside wheels are followed. This eliminates or at least significantly reduces tyre scrub and provides smooth turning at low speeds. However, at higher speeds, we actually want the opposite effect (anti Ackerman). The reason is because under lateral load transfer, the optimum slip angle value of the outside tyre is greater than the inside tyre due to the load transfer. More static toe out means more effective Ackerman angle, which is not desired at high speeds. If you look at the front tyres of Formula cars during steering, you'll see that they actually have negative Ackerman engineered into the steering geo.
3. A lesser effect, but an effect nonetheless, aero. Toe out creates a larger frontal cd, hurting top speed on faster tracks. We want max speed, always..
So while yes, static toe out does provide a slightly bitier turn in motion as you allow the outside tyre a moment to receive load before generating thrust via tyre slip angle. The negatives everywhere else outweigh the positive. There are always other aspects to consider, but hopefully this explains why I never go for static front toe out. I'm sure one day I'll be proven wrong, but until that happens this is the way I'm doing it. My customer's and my lap times can do the talking
Rear axle toe in will:
