Esprit suspension settings

carbuff said:

That said, I have specs for reducing the understeer for the '88. They were provided at the first Lotus Owners Gathering I attended in 1994.

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In those days when we were selling these as new cars, Arnie was telling us to just set the front toe to zero. That's probably what he told you at the same time. The S4 front toe setting which is 1.0mm OUT. I can tell you first hand they don't handle well when you mis-read the machine, and set it to 1.0mm *in*! You don't wanna know.

The tolerance for the front toe setting is only 0.5mm. That's so small you can barely breathe on the tie rod to get it right. Its worth the effort. Some alignment systems use degrees instead of millimeters. The corresponding spec is 0.3 degrees toe out, plus/minus 0.15 degrees. Your local tire shop will choke when you give them a tolerance range that small.

The S4 rear suspension is 1.5mm toe IN each side, plus/minus 0.5mm. I don't have the book for the earlier cars handy, so I don't know if its the same or not. Again that's a very tight tolerance especially as its set with shims. Don't let the alignment shop use shims that are smaller than the original Lotus parts. If needed you can copy the original shims. On my own S4s, which was supposedly maintained for years by one of the better Lotus techs out there, had body fender shims in there for the rear toe, which did not have enough bearing surface. They would deflect easily, so you can imagine what it handled like when I got it.

The V8 and non-USA S4s use rear toe-in 1.0mm each side. I now have the larger V8 wheels on my car so that's what I am using.

Front Toe-in feels like complete crap on the Esprit, like driving a car with front casters, no centering, no grip. Rear toe-out would cause the rear to be pretty unstable and dangerous at times.

The only way you will be getting front camber adjustment is with new upper wishbones from the 95+ cars, unless you weld parts onto your existing arms and machine out the hole that the bolts go through, and use eccentric washers like the later cars.

Standard 88-94 (early) front wishbone= no camber adjustment.


Later 95+ (and '91 X180-R) camber adjustable front upper wishbones.



Standard rear upper links on the earlier cars 88-94.


Later adjustable camber rear upper links.


I like a little toe out in front (0.1deg per side), which is probably a bit much for some people.

Here was my alignment.

Thanks guys, resurrecting a bit of an old thread here....

I have the adjustable upper rear links (hemi joints) and will be taking the car to my alignment shop later this week. They do a lot of alignment for professional racing as well as vintage stuff like F5000, nascar, even vintage F1. They're pretty good.

Esprit suspension is adjustable in every regard, both front and rear. It may take some shims here or there, and a non-original adjustable link here or there....but it's adjustable. No doubt the Lotus engineers spec'd things very well for a nice handling road car. However, what is compliant and semi-benign for road settings (ie. tire life) is rarely what's optimal for sport or even track work. Usually, a bit more camber is necessary for the latter, for example. I'm wondering what people may have used to success as far as non-original settings for more aggressive driving conditions. Anyone have any first-hand experience? I'm not asking about what somebody may have heard....or thinks it should be...etc....hoping someone here has first hand experience. First hand experience, probably someone who has done some track days with their esprit at a Lotus club event.

If nobody has any such first hand experience I'll just go with my usual.... 1/8th toe in at the front, zero toe rear, 1/2 degree camber rear, 1 degree camber front, and pick a mid-point for caster. These settings have worked well on my ferraris, porsches and GT40.....surprisingly all pretty consistently.

Thanks in advance for any help.

If you are tracking the car the settings will vary depending on the track and whither it is a left-hander or a right-hander. To do it right you also alter the weight and balance using scales for each wheel. The tire pressure has a large effect also. Generally you start with the factory specs and experiment from there. If the shop gets their scales out BEFORE they try to align it you know you are dealing with professionals who have set up other cars for tracking and racing. Otherwise figure all they know how to do is ordinary street cars. Clearly that is not what you are looking for. As for settings, if the database of the rack doesn't have the specs in it that you want, just about every good, modern machine has a "custom" entry where they can enter settings manually. If you are really into the science of alignment you chart the castor, camber, and toe at several points of the ride height. It changes and depending on what you want it needs to change in the right directions. If not you must change the geometry of the suspension to make it change the way you want. One reason the ride height is so important. For street cars alignment is usually set to get the longest life out of the tires. Not so important for racing.
David Teitelbaum

Vulcan, thank you, good information. On the rear I have adjustable top links (see pic) so camber can be set pretty well. For the front, i'm fabricating double adjustable top wishbones so that both camber and caster can be relatively easily set.

Other than toe settings, looks like you're in the same range for camber I typically use as well - 0 to 1 degree range front/rear. Have you run your car on the track? If yes, did those setting seem reasonably drivable?

JT, thank you. Yes, agreed on all. Pretty familiar with the process of setting up starting with ride height, settings/adjustments, corner weighting, etc. Was really asking about folk's first hand experience with different camber/toe/caster settings for occasional track fun for a street driven car.