Go Faster for FREE!! Alignment Tips for Your High Performance Car!

It's not often you can get more performance from your car for free but as is the case for your car's alignment, it's true... as long as you do it yourself!

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[mituc]

You can't simply skip any technical article from Mike Kojima. You can't. The joy on his face when he speaks about serious stuff and the comprehensiveness and detail of his performance is simply mind blowing!

[jeepinovertheworld]

"But if you want to go faster, stick around and let's talk about stuff"...😂 sold

[willbgrill]

So I work in auto repair, I love doing alignments, and I haven't seen many auto oriented youtubers really talk about alignments in a knowledgeable way so when I saw this recommended I thought "finally!" because every time I watch a video with Mike I always learn and enjoy the knowledge he shares. Loved the video. This reminded me of tuning cars in Forza Motorsport haha, I set a lot of faster than average laps through alignment adjustments alone!

I wanted to reiterate on normal car alignments: the majority of alignments are performed because of poor tire wear, most of the time it's because a car will end up with too much toe-out from bushing fatigue, road imperfections and impact, fasteners shifting(aftermarket camber bolts are junk like he mentioned), or just a terrible alignment from the factory. On daily drivers and commuters you should stay away from any toe out if you really want the tires to last. Toe out on cars that aren't heavily loaded in corners will consistently eat up the inner tread very fast, on top of that it will wear choppy/feathered with negative camber(basically triangular strips with 2 corners on the inner tread block and the third corner pointing towards the outer tread block), this will eat your all season UTQG 700 treadwear tire down in 20k miles easily. On top of that the tires are going to HOWL because they're no longer circular in shape, more like paddles by the time they need replacing. So if you want to take your daily driver on the track every once in a while but spend a lot more time in it going to work then find a middle ground with maybe 0 toe(or neutral toe) in the front, because pretty much every spec for modern cars has some degree of toe-in(or neutral depending on the car). On a regular traffic cars you want a tiny amount of toe-in for every small amount of negative camber, to deflect or flex the sidewall for a better contact patch going straight, and for better high speed stability on uneven roads - road crown and surface deviations. Also if you do this at home, it's worth it to have some sort of gauge setup like the one in the video: 0.5 degree can make a big difference. Remember to measure after adjusting something, maybe drive it around the block and remeasure, I know soft bushings with a load on them can easily hide the full adjustment on an alignment lift - typically when the adjustment is quite drastic.

Really interesting info on track setups, always wondered about what worked better for these high load situations. I used to have a service writer who had a family hookup to a bmw oriented racing team and he would get free used DOT race tires for his M3 that were on the track car, they were always extremely choppy on the inner tread and vibrated like crazy because they were halfway used up on a track.

[TurboHappyCar]

25:55 "Some is good, more is better, too much is way bad." -Mike. 😂 Thanks again for this absolutely legendary information. 👍

[stevepeters]

Mike is the everlasting gobstopper of motorsport knowledge. Mike is the man!

[jasonmajere]

Holy shit channel started to blow up. Couldn’t be happier, Mikes enthusiasm is infectious.

[UncleDuncan]

Mike! You’re the best instructor I’ve ever seen or heard. 👍🏼

[andydushane]

The Dave Point... that really takes me back. The golden age of Sport Compact Car in the early 2000s was a special time, I learned so much from Dave and Mike. It's awesome to see Mike still sharing his knowledge.

[HHotWeather]

Legend has it that he’s still smiling right now

[mixxeerr]

Mike Kojima is such a legend. I've been following him for like 25 years.

[EdgarsLS]

I had a bit of toe-out in the rear suspension of a subaru when racing on dirt, you had to have a blazing fast reaction to keep it from snap oversteering on decel into a corner, but I liked it because it cut down on the annoying understeer from all that weight in the front and little traction on dirt.

[dontaylor]

Man this guy really seems to know mechanical and racing stuff so completely. So much car knowledge from so much experience.

[ExSheriffFattyBoySkinnyArms]

27 minutes of free advice! Thank you sir!

[MrBillDaBear]

I did NOT think front toe out could actually reduce tire wear. Great info

[travezripley]

“If you wanna go fast, uhh go fast for free… come on… let’s uhh talk about some stuff.” -This needs to be on a MotoIQ Tshirt.

[grippgoat]

Me last night, after first test-drive after installing sexy SPL suspension arm type stuff: "I need to work on the alignment". MotoIQ today: "Hold my Red Bull". 🤣 Thanks for the timely video!

[feelgoodhorizon]

Grew up reading your articles, now my sons watch your videos for their car stuff. <3 ty legend.

[garager]

MK/SCC is the reason why I know as much about suspension as I do. BTW the "lead point" is also known as the "Dave Point" 😅 as per older issue of SCC

[CSIGrissom]

Mr. Kojima is a Legend in the Tuner World…Truly Appreciate you sharing your Knowledge and Experience….Thank you MotoIQ 🙏

[crazypj]

I've now watched a few of your video's, generally engine builds.
Really enjoy your delivery and obvious experience of the things you talk about.
Very much doubt I'll ever use the things you just explained or vast majority of engine explanations but subscribing anyway.