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Toe-in

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Trevor Jessie

Trevor Jessie

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I set the uglybug up with 0 degrees of toe in when I changed tires/rims. It handled very well, but tended to easily dart. My wife mentioned that she may want to drive the car this fall (since I still do not have the Midget on the road). Therefore I moved the toe-in such that I have 1/8" inwards. The car doesn't dart as quickly, but now the tires scream if I take a corner briskly.

I'll double check my toe-in, but at the moment the only option I see is to get the Midget back on the road and reset to uglybug back to darting ways. I don't want to try different tires since these barely have 2000 miles on them.
 
Maybe, I'm gonna play with tire pressure for a bit.
 
What kind of camber do you have with the tires on it?
 
1/8" seems on the high side to me
 
Trevor:

What you are experiencing is "Ackerman Steering". This is due to the difference in the radius from a fixed point to the two front wheels as you turn the car.

With less toe-in and going slightly toe-out, the Ackerman will start showing up to a greater degree and aid turn in on an under-steering car. I won't attempt to describe all the mathematic relationship/details here. Just "Google" it and you can see what I am talking about. It has to do with steering geometry. A wagon axle has zero Ackerman, and modern cars have some Ackerman.

On my race Spridget I run about 1/32" toe-in and on my street Spridgets, I run about 1/16" toe in. I set these with a Dunlop Optical gauge which allows fairly precise settings.

HTH,
Mike Miller
 
Thanks Mike,

I'm going to turn it back closer to 1/16" toe-in, but I can feel some play in the inner tie rod end. So I'm not going to waste too much time on it until I have an opportunity to pull the rack and remove a shim.
 
If you have play in a tie rod end, then you could have a toe change once you make a turn and the camber and caster kick in and the tire ends up steering itself until the play is take up/out/in.

Mike
 
Yup, I realized the problem when rechecking the toe-in. It was 100+ degrees in the garage and so I decided to wait for another day to take the rack out.
 
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