Lexs400

I recently had tires put on at sears and they aligned the car as well. needless to say the car's handling is nowhere as good as it used to be before the alignment.
they gave me a before and after printout where the original toe settings on the 93LS400 were around -0.05 on both sides. the tech claimed that it was way out of spec and changed both left and right to +0.16. good thing the castor and camber werent touched.
I would like to know if the service manual gives the factory specs for the toe settings for the first gen LS without air suspension. If so could someone please post the settings.

SRK

I will find the specs for you tomorrow, but the bottom line is that all cars use very similar specs for alignment, and the Lexus is particularly easy to align both front and rear. These cars have very good, and very intuitive alignment eccentrics.
The toe in front should be around 1/16 of an inch, a bit less on the rear. Camber should be near zero. Caster a couple of degrees positive on the front only. With that, the car should steer and handle very well. It sounds like the shop that did yours centered the wheel and ignored the other angles. Typical.
Don't let them get away with it. The LS is easy to align, nothing special, and if they can't do a good alignment on the car, or claim it is too tough to do, they are idiots.

RA40

iTrader: (6)

Ignoring my camber, these were the final settings on mine.

Front:
Camber -1.50
Caster +7.85
Toe +1/16 .0625"

Rear
Camber -1.25
Toe +1/12 .0833"

Looking at the alignment specs for my other car the toe front is .06 and back .08.

Lexs400

well, after numerous tries at the dealer and other alignment shops, the end result is that the car is tracking straight, but the sterring wheel during turns is very hard, meaning a stiff/hard steering wheel.
i'm crious, is there anyhting that can be over-tightened while the alignment is performed causing a harder/stiffer steering wheel while at rest or driving the car ?

Smoothride

Castor has a large effect on the steering effort, the higher the number, the higher the effort and also a higher castor number will want to go straight longer w/ no hands. You also want to make sure that you have toe IN on both front and rear, not much though. I will run about 1/16 TOTAL (1/32per side) toe in on the front and 1/8 total (1/16 per side) toe IN on the back. If you have changed the offset of your wheels you have also changed the scrub radius and roll center and that can mess with the dynamics of the steering and handling.

Toe out on rear wheels = very bad.

The castor setting on a non air suspension ls430 is 6.to 7.5degrees

Smoothride

Lexs400,

I forgot to mention that if you indeed had toe-out on the front, the initial turn in (responsiveness) will be a little better, toe out "preloads" the front tires for quicker turn in but w. toe out, the car will have a tendancy to wander while on the highway.

Also check the tire pressure, should be around 32psi, I suppose that the tech."could" have tightened something somewhere, but to my knowledge, nothing that is adjusted in the course of a regular alignment can be overtightened to cause this feeling. Don't forget, you changed 2 variables at once, tires and alignment.


Plus, you should ALWAYS sit in the car while having the alignment done, and if you normally have a passenger, add their weight, if you carry a trunk full of junk, leave it there. I have a passanger about 1/4 the time, so I put about 40lbs in the pass seat.

Always pick your own specs, being "in the range is a joke, if one side is on one end of the reange, and the other side is on the other side of the range, you've just paid for a crappy alignment, the left/right numbers should match. Always request the best tech, tell them you want to pick your specs, sit in the car, and don't settle for anything less that a .01 degree difference.

What were your camber specs??