new tires and alignment

Last night, I had a new set of tires put on and a fresh alignment (done
w/ me in the car). The new tires are Toyo T1-Rs (195/55/14 on stock 1994
aluminum). Going on Lanny's specs, here's the before and after numbers:

Btw, what are "SAI" and "Included Angle"?

BEFO
Front
caster (L/R): 4.5° / 3.8°
camber (L/R): -0.7° / -0.6°
toe (L/R): 0.05° / 0.05°
SAI (L/R): 12.0° / 12.1°
Included Angle (L/R): 11.3° / 11.5°
Rear
camber (L/R): -0.6° / -1.0°
toe (L/R): 0.20° / -0.20°
(so, that means the back of my car was always pushing to the right, huh?)

AFTER:
Front
caster (L/R): 4.7° / 4.7°
camber (L/R): -1.2° / -1.2°
toe (L/R): 0.05° / 0.05°
SAI (L/R): 12.6° / 12.6°
Included Angle (L/R): 11.4° / 11.4°
Rear
camber (L/R): -1.7° / -1.7°
toe (L/R): 0.05° / -0.05°

Disclaimer: I'm no alignment guru, I have only basic understanding of the
terms and how they affect performance.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to play yet. They hit on
everything except the caster. 4.7° was as close as they could get to the
5° spec. The following other concessions were also made: their machine
does toe in degrees not inch-fractions, and only to 2 decimal precision,
so 0.05° fit between the 0.045° - 0.075° spec; camber is only accurate to
0.1, so they got -1.7° for the rear camber instead of the -1.75° spec.

It looks like they did a pretty good job, and for HALF what I paid for my
last alignment.. any comments?

-Scott

In article >,
Scott Hughes > wrote:

> It looks like they did a pretty good job, and for HALF what I paid for my
> last alignment.. any comments?

Looks excellent, Scott. Where did you get it done?

Give the new T1Rs a few hundred miles to break in before you thrash them
hard. Be prepared for cheek-cramping grins.

--
Lanny Chambers
'94C, St. Louis
http://www.hummingbirds.net/alignment.html

Lanny Chambers > wrote in
:

> In article >,
> Scott Hughes > wrote:
>
>> It looks like they did a pretty good job, and for HALF what I paid
>> for my last alignment.. any comments?
>
> Looks excellent, Scott. Where did you get it done?
>
> Give the new T1Rs a few hundred miles to break in before you thrash
> them hard. Be prepared for cheek-cramping grins.
>

Alexander Tire & Auto, down on Baptist Church Road just north of 44 for
any St Louisans. It was actually recommended to me by Howard (Sports Car
Center) for tires when I needed them for my other car a couple years ago.
It was a very-reasonable $69 for a good custom-alignment. They seem like
pretty good guys over there.

Thanks for the tip on the break-in (and for the alignment research of
course!), I vaguely remember hearing that tires required a short break-
in, but wasn't sure about it. I'll already be at about 200mi of non-
thrashing by the end of tomorrow, so they should be almost ready by the
weekend.

-Scott

In article >,
Scott Hughes > wrote:

> Alexander Tire & Auto, down on Baptist Church Road just north of 44 for
> any St Louisans.

I've used them for mounting, but I wasn't happy with their balancing
precision. It's OK for our Accord, but not close enough for the Miata.
Real nice guys, though.

--
Lanny Chambers
'94C, St. Louis
http://www.hummingbirds.net/alignment.html