Trout

iTrader: (1)

I am still waiting for my ALK to arrive - however I have been following some of the debate as to whether the ALK is worth fitting to the STi V. Just out of interest I have recently had the following email from Jim Gurieff at Whiteline, hopefully putting things straight.


"This was due to some speculation on behalf of MRT who supplied the
information for the Castor Capers article. Prior to the release of the STi
in Australia, MRT had received some information regarding changes to the
lower arm. They suggested to us that the arm and mounts had changed with
the assumption being that the new mounts addressed the lift issue. This
proved not to be the case once we analysed a vehicle.

The STi does use a stiffer rubber bush to minimise dynamic angular (caster)
changes. It also adds a very small amount (less than 1/4 deg) of positive
caster by relocating the mounting slots on the bush mount. But this does
not address nor affect the incidence of front lift which is consistent
through the entire WRX, Legacy and Impreza range.

In summary, the STi - V5 has slightly more caster than WRX, Impreza and
Legacy and a stiffer rubber bush though not as performance orientated as
ours which adds more static caster with a less compliant bush. But, it has
the same amount of anti-dive geometry as the others hence lift is still an
issue making the Whiteline anti-lift kit just as relevant."

Cheers,

David

Darren Soothill

Another interesting point are the settings that Whiteline suggest for the car which are 1-1.5 degrees negative camber with 1-2 mm toe out at the rear and the fronts with zero toe!

This is different to the MRT .75 degree negative camber!!

The information I am gathering at the moment seems to say that putting the toe out on the rear will make the car very tail happy and potentially quite lethal in the wet because the rear will come round on the car alot more easily. I am still trying to get some more information from various sources about this at the moment.

Mark Aitken has had the kit fitted on his car with the Leda suspension and initally had quite a high static camber setting which made the car understeer alot more.

He has now had the camber reduced to a lower setting and the car apparently just digs in when cornering. I am just trying to get some time to get over to Leda to get them to fit the setup to my car and realign all the geometry at the same time and checking out the corner weights as well then I should be able to add some comments as to what it has done to the handling of my car.

Darren

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Just to confirm previous suspicions about whether an ALK will benefit a MY99 car, specifically STI.

I have had mien fitted for two days now and have only tried it on wet roads with part worn S01s.

The front-end grip is INCREDIBLE. The car just turns and grips. Even more incredible is the ability to put power down coming through the corner, with very little understeer coming in and no torque steer - which is pretty much a wet corner Scooby thing.

Highly recommended, even for an STI V - which reputedly fixes this problem, although when you take it off, the locating bush is identical to the standard car!

David

AndyMc

David

Have you noticed a reduction in front end lift when under power or an increase in the amount of dive when braking?
I would have thought that it was preferable to have anti dive geometry due to the much greater forces under braking eg 0-60 in 5-5.5 secs and 60-0 in 2.7 secs.
It also seems to me that the amount of lift/dive experienced would have more to do with the spring and damper rates than anything else.

I've had my car setup with Prodrive geometry and in most situations front end grip has improved eg I can now provoke the car into lift-off oversteer and power oversteer when I want to and in general it is easier to use the throttle to adjust the car mid-bend.

In the above situations I don't want anymore front end grip.Where I do want more grip is on the initial turn in,where I feel it still understeers too easily.

I have been wondering if the ALK is the answer to this problem and it seems like it might be!

Also has anyone tried reducing the amount of rear camber(mine has about 1 degree as standard)? If so what effect did it have?

I won't be happy until my car handles better than a P1.

Andy

DaveU

David - how did you fit it in the end?

Dave

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Dave U,

it's a secret...

...oh, alright, I got someone to do it for £15.

Andy,

under braking the car is very solid and well behaved.

With the rear sway bar links and the ALK the car is absolutely chuckable, I am so much more confident in corners, even wet ones.

I have had Prodrive geom for some time now, but these mods on top of that make a HUGE improvement to handling. The car is so much less nervous, all for less than £200.

David