SailnDive, what type race car did you run?
FWIW, if you want to go forward with setting up the chassis, you can go inexpensive and insert the upper A arms and use rod ends. This will give some range of castor and camber. Toe is already there.
The Spyder is a pretty basic setup, most closely resembles an old school race kart or garden tractor when it comes to the front end adjustability.
In my opinion, the Spyder and whatever method of alignment is utilized, has no assurance to obtain true centerline thrust.
Here's why. The engine is installed during the initial build. While doing this it is aligned to some dimension and definition. Everything, is based off this, but it is never checked nor adjusted except on the initial build.
Based on the engine alignment, the belt is tracked and this positions the rear wheel.
If the rear wheel is positioned where the rear axle or the wheels centerline plane does not split the front treadwidth exactly, the vehicle must ride with some rear wheel offset. All the toe adjustment in the world will never correct this.
Can it be corrected, yes, but will be a detailed process.
To give a visual to those that may not understand, imagine the capital letter "I"
In this "I" it is obvious the vertical portion and the fake front tires (quotes) all point straight while the vertical and horizontal portion of the I are at 90 degrees to each other. The lower portion of the Irepresents the rear axle.Also, the vertical portion of the I is centered on the horizontal portion. This is a true alignment for the Spyder. Everything is square and centered.
Now consider the italic "I". If the rear wheel position (bottom of the I) is not square to the vertical portion of the I, the centerline thrust is deviated. On this, notice that the front wheels (shown as quotes) and the bottom of the I are all square or true. Sadly though, you can see the rear tire / rear axle (bottom of the I) is offset to the left from the true centerline, which is established by the equal distance of the front wheels to center AND the belt alignment based on an engine / countershaft not square to the vehicles centerline. The belt runs true, but the rear axle / rear wheel is not aligned with the centerline.
Using the simple keyboard to illustrate I hope this helped. The letter I is a simple representation.
To illustrate the vehicle traveling it is something like this.
"I" vs "I"
Regardless, I like the entire laser setup. I do admit though, our machine was aligned by myself using toe sticks and feel of how it handles.
The details of camber and castor are also important. Castor misalignment can have the vehicle pull to one side. Camber is also important, to establish the tire contact patch as the steering angle is turned away from straight. Currently, this is not adjustable and if balanced left vs right is a non issue, unless you reside where the roads are steeply crowned.
Again, hope it helped some folks understand how involved chassis design and setup can be.
PK
