Buying / inspection advice Octavia vRS 2007

[Martin]

My brother in law worked for one of the major suspension suppliers. He reckons if it takes less than 45 minutes to setup the alignment on a euro like a Skoda, they aren't doing it right.

Can't agree with that at all - there are not a lot of adjustments
Toe is a lock nut and adjuster, camber (when adjustable) is just an eccentric bolt
It's been like that for 35 years now, Jap and Euro

[Martin]

Hey Brad

On the Pulsar I'd consider a little bit of toe-out on the rear (1-1.5mm each side) if there is adjustment for it. It will act like passive 4 wheel steering and make the car turn-in quicker. OTOH, it also makes it a bit squirrely. Or did you arrive at those settings by copying the successful cars? (worked for me when i was racing).

I have read about the benefits of rear toe out but it can bite hard on the faster corners if you get loose
I'm also worried about lift off over steer when somebody in front of you screws up
So I decided to start with a conservative setup
As it turned out - with the eccentric bolts at their maximum I can only just make 0 deg at the rear

Certainly, rear toe out is on the cards when I'm a little faster and in the groove

The Pulsar guys are not very sharing and I ran out of time getting the car ready
So I took a wild guess which was ok - it's just a place to start and tune from

What happened to the Z-car you had?

I still have it and love it - but it's an expensive beast - it's almost ready for super sprints
The class (Prod Sports) I want to race it in has a lot of diversity, there is a $250k Porsche winning every race by a long margin, there is almost no close racing
That's what made me look at the Pulsar Challenge - cheaper and class parity (to a degree)

All the settings I do are for "average drivers" who want maximum tyre life & minimal noise.
If the driver likes to consistently give it a bit around corners then you need to be a bit more aggressive with settings.

Fully agree - given the cost of tyres and the need for comfort this is the way to go for sure

The best way to do it is to look at how the tyres are wearing & adjust the car to suit.

Again, fully agree.
Looking at the Pulsar, I'm going to give both the front and rear a bit more negative camber and a bit more toe out at the front

[brad]

Can't agree with that at all - there are not a lot of adjustments
Toe is a lock nut and adjuster, camber (when adjustable) is just an eccentric bolt
It's been like that for 35 years now, Jap and Euro

You can get minor changes by undoing some of the fixed bolts and utilising the clearance in the holes. My Liberty had half a degree of "adjustment" in the rear hub carrier if you undid the two top bolts. It was the difference between having the cambers dead even or 0.5 different.

My Nissan was the same at the front - supposedly not adjustable but there was half a degree available if you muscled it a bit.

If you bother to work at a mounting point level then it can take some time. If a car had torsion springs (Valiants, HiLux & Tarago) I usually took the time to adjust the spring height properly - which threw everything (caster, camber & toe) out of whack & took forever to sort out out - transformed the car though.

Then there's a few aftermarket add-ons that can help like the adjustable console bushes and the bushes to tie down the subframes (stops movement).

For the Pulsar series, Gary Wilmington's son was racing in that a few years back (and still is I believe). Tell him your a mate of a mate of Dion from Cambridge Park. He might be able to offer some advice. I think he's a rep for one of the oil companies - maybe you'll have to buy some oil

[Martin]

Yeah - the Skoda and the Z sub frames can be massaged by knowledgeable and capable technicians,
but he won't get that sort of service from just any old alignment place

Thanks for the tip!!

Sorry to the OP for the highjack

[Smiley_Walsh]

The original factory spec for the rear is -1.25 deg to -2.25deg with 0mm to 4.2mm toe in. The negative camber as you got close to -2 was great for hooking into corners but caused sawtoothing and noise.

The figures were revised with less camber.
For the standard suspension 2UA, 2UB & 2UC the rear figure was revised to -0.8 degrees +-0.2deg. (sorry my head only works in decimal degrees, can't do degrees & minutes)

For the vRS it was revised to -1.25 degrees +-0.1deg (1.15 deg - 1.35deg).

Toe-in was revised to 0mm-3mm (this might be wrong as I'm trying to convert from deg to mm). It's 10' +-2'

If I was setting up a vRS for trundling around the suburbs / motorways I'd be aiming for as upright as the adjustments allow (-0.8 hopefully) but I know that most aligners won't go outside the recommendations which is why I said -1.0 to -1.2.

I'd be aiming for the minimum amount of toe-in to make the rear more lively but a lot of people don't like that.

Anyway, you've had it done now and it's probably better than it was.

What did they charge you? Any idea what machine they had?

Last time I asked matt at Camden GTI if there were any decent aligners in Campbelltown he burst out laughing.

Ha ha! Oh well. It's done now, as you said!

I actually asked a colleague of Matt's at Camden GTI on Saturday- he suggested Spot On, who are just down the road. $49 I think it cost.

The guy working on the alignment actually laughed when I suggested setting the rear camber to -1.0 because he said it wouldn't have adjustable camber on my 'family car'. He also said that setting would cause inside edge tyre wear..
then discovered it could be adjusted , obviously, and that the minimum camber they could manage was -1.0 anyway

Lucky I don't mind having a bit of a sleeper.. Being the wagon!

TBH, I thought the work they did was fine - they just hadn't seen one before.

I haven't really had a chance to drive it much since then, but I'm sure it is properly set up now at least.

No no idea about the make of machine, sorry.

[Smiley_Walsh]

Yeah - the Skoda and the Z sub frames can be massaged by knowledgeable and capable technicians,
but he won't get that sort of service from just any old alignment place

Thanks for the tip!!

Sorry to the OP for the highjack

No worries, Martin. Interesting reading!

While I'd love to get a track day in at some point, the majority of my driving is unfortunately quite mundane, with the odd moment or two of fun enabled courtesy of my mellow yellow wagon!

[brad]

TBH, I thought the work they did was fine - they just hadn't seen one before.

Even if you tell them it's a MkV Golf with a different body they still don't get it.

[Martin]

Funny story, I know it's frustrating

Generally you'll find shops with alignment capabilities only know how to use the machine
They just set the car to the specs in the book
Their actual alignment theory knowledge is almost nil

The guy working on the alignment actually laughed when I suggested setting the rear camber to -1.0 because he said it wouldn't have adjustable camber on my 'family car'. He also said that setting would cause inside edge tyre wear...

-1 degree is small

I've done 56k with almost -2 deg on the front and slight inner tyre wear is only just noticeable

The real question is should we run -1~-2 degrees of camber and why?
For general street usage I agree with Brad, run the wheels as upright as possible

[Smiley_Walsh]

The real question is should we run -1~-2 degrees of camber and why?
For general street usage I agree with Brad, run the wheels as upright as possible

I think he would have set the camber less than -1 degree (or greater, by which I mean closer to zero ) if he could, but didn't seem able to.

[Martin]

Oh yeah, minimum when negative trends towards zero, I often get that around the wrong way around