how much toe in?

[Guest Anonymous]

hi,

to anyone following this, I just replaced both tie-rods, the center link, and a ball joint.

everything went pretty smoothe, heat was needed, banging was needed, and even a trick with a jack I could never in good concious recomend.... The ball joint was a pain,just cause I couldn't figure out how to get to it with out removing the wheel and what not..

SO it's all set up, and pretty alligned.. only thing I'm unsure on is, how much toe in do I want?

thanks in advance,

Zt

[c.d.iesel]

"0" to 4mm toe-in each wheel -

[TobyB]

and repeatedly!

Actually, I usually run 1/16" TOTAL, but I'll put in more if it gets annoyingly wandery.

fwiw,

t

[Guest Anonymous]

"0" to 4mm toe-in each wheel -

Creighton, that's waaaay too much toe-in, even if you meant "total" toe rather than "each wheel" as you wrote.

Individual toe for each wheel is added together to get the total for the front axle.

4 mm toe @ each wheel would be 8 mm total. I can't think of any circumstances where that setting would work, it would just chew thru tires. On our racecars, for short & tight tracks we run a lot of negative toe (toe-out) to help turn in characteristics. But that won't work on the street, and massive toe-in won't help anywhere. A little bit of toe-in on a street car is useful to ensure the wheels point straight when moving forward, as forces working on the bushings cause the wheels to splay out. If you have stiffer/less compliant bushings, then less toe-in is needed to counteract those driving forces.

BMW specs shown in the service manual & the owner's manual have slightly different values. These are "total toe" for the front axle, cut the number in half for individual toe.

Owner's Manual (1973)

1 mm (+/- 1 mm)

angular measures:

0*, 10' (+/- 10') or in decimal that's 0.166 degrees (+/- 0.166 deg)

Service Manual

1.5 mm (+1 / -.5 mm)

angular measures:

0*, 14" (+9' / -4') or in decimal that's 0.233 degrees (+0.15 / - 0.066)

If you are doing it yourself at home, then the distance (like 0 to 1 mm) is useful to read off the tape measure. Be aware that you will likely be measuring at the tire tread, and the factory distance value is from the rim. Won't really matter, as the difference is less than the presumed accuarcy of the method, and it's probably better to err on having less toe anyways.

If you are going onto a shop's alignment rack, the tech may not know how to change his machine's display units to read distance (1 mm) or degrees/minutes, so that's where the decimal angle spec is good to know.

For a reasonably tight street driven 02, I'd say ask for total front toe of around 0.15 to 0.20 degrees.

These values are typical for many BMW. For example, the E36 M3 has less toe specified for the sports suspension vs the stock (nominal angle of 10 minutes vs 20 minutes.)

I just had to set toe on my 98 Compact, after installing late E36 M3 lower control arms which have a different geometry. These M3 LCA's feature more caster, they achieve that by placing the ball joint approx. 10 mm forward of the standard E36. I put the LCA's on with solid motorsport bushings (not offset), and the geometry pushed the toe out 38 mm !

I used longacre toe plates to reset that to near 1 mm toe-in before I could test drive it. I've checked it a again since the install, and the measurement is repeatable & the car feels good. Still, I plan to take it onto a Hunter machine alignment rack to get the whole front & rear measured accurately.

[john_a]

(nt)

[Guest Anonymous]

weel, then I just drove 100 miles with too much toe in!

I knew it wasn't right though.. but I had to get here.. tires don't look bad though.. but the steering was a bit agressive and at times just mucky. I will fix it tomorrow as best I can.

Thanks guys!

[robspeed]

too good!!

edit: http://www.bmw2002faq.com/content/view/61/32/

let me know if my changes/edits are wrong or otherwise offensive I just "articleized" it some and wrote a lil intro bs....

[john_a]

edit: http://www.bmw2002faq.com/content/view/61/32/

let me know if my changes/edits are ... ... ...

Rob, I'd rather not submit my post as an article -- give me some time & I can try to help out with something in its place that's more to the point for a FAQ subject. There's problems with the content that are OK for a forum reply, but I don't want it to stay up in the FAQ.

So for now I gotta ask you pull it off.

But thanks for the positive feedback!

[robspeed]

email me whatever you'd like to replace it at jennaishealed at hotmail dot com. Thanks john