First Chris sprays a paint stripe on the tire to create an accurate toe reference line.
He then got to work on the process of adjusting the height, camber and toe going back and forth until the car was corner weighted and balanced.
Final setup for our “street car” alignment was negative .8 in the front and 1.7 in the rear. The ride height was raised about 5/8″ in the rear from where we had it at the MotoIQ garage. Interesting fact was that the car weighed 3,758 lbs with me in the driver seat. The front to rear weight bias is 54.1% for the front and 45.9% for the back, which seems like a pretty good bias for a mass production sedan with performance intentions.
With a 400 mile drive in front of us, there was plenty of time to evaluate the new suspension in all sorts of conditions and after having just driven the same route on the stock suspension, this was our impression.
The ride is firm but doesn’t toss you about in the cabin. Plainly, it feels like a car labeled as “Sport” should but not in a harsh or brutal way. Thanks to the new sway bars from Eibach, the chassis listing and wobbling is gone, and we can look at corners as a challenge instead of a boating maneuver. We dialed in the KW’s to their basic settings for this application which is 9 clicks rebound and 6 clicks compression. After investing a lot of time and cash in an upgrade it’s understandable when you want to cast the improvement in the best light possible so I took a couple friends out for their unbiased impression of the new suspension and swaybars. Both guys own late model five liter Mustangs, so I was interested in what they thought. Here’s a few of the comments:
- “If you told me this car was stock I’d think the ride was stock.”
- “My car would not handle that well going around that corner.”
- “It looks good sitting like that.”
In the end the choice is yours, which is why modifying cars to your individual tastes is a cool thing. What I like most about both the KW’s and the Eibach suspension pieces is that they allow me to change the suspension setup to my tastes. I really feel like I’m driving a performance car now instead of a luxury sedan that falls over itself in the corners and gets scary when aggressively driven. I couldn’t be more pleased with the way this car drives after this round of improvements.
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