Alignment
Alignment is one of the most important things in getting your drift car to handle correctly, and it’s a subject that’s mangled quite a bit on Internet forums. It’s important to make your alignment adjustable. In the case of you having a popular car like a Nissan S-chassis, you can get adjustable front tension rods, rear toe, traction and camber links — all off-the-shelf — from companies like SPL Parts and Battle Version. If you have a car with MacPherson struts in the front, you can often get camber plates. Ground Control Suspension has camber plates for many different cars.
One way to make the camber adjustable on MacPherson strut cars cheaply is to drill out one of the spindle bolts slightly. Then you can tilt the spindle inward while tightening up the bolts. Surprisingly, this won’t slip as long as you tighten the stock bolts fully. This can get you a couple of degrees of adjustment. Once you make your car adjustable, you can try these basic alignment settings. Remember, these are drift settings and aren’t necessarily good for everyday street driving. Rapid tire wear on the street may occur. However, you’ll probably get better tire wear when drifting!
Front-wheel Camber
Go with 3 to 4 degrees of negative camber, which helps put the tread flat on the ground when under side load. Under load, the tire’s carcass wants to flex and lift the inside of the tread off the ground; as the car rolls, it also wants to tip the tire to where the inside of the tread is being lifted off the ground. The car’s suspension geometry tries to make up for some of this, but it can’t totally compensate — running negative camber compensates for this. By keeping the tread on the ground, you get better front grip and less understeer. You don’t want your drift car to understeer if you can help it. If your car has multilink front suspension, you can use closer to 3 degrees of negative camber; a strut-type suspension can use closer to 4 degrees.
When you start to drift, you can simply let go of the wheel and let if feed through your fingers, and the car will counter faster ...
Front Toe
You want to run a slight amount of toe out, typically about 1/8-inch total; this will help your car initiate better by turning in sharper. This makes a big difference when you’re trying to feint. Too much toe out makes the car twitchy, so I don’t recommend more than ¼-inch toe out.
Caster
You want to run as much positive caster as you can get without hitting the fenders. This is typically around 7 degrees or so on most cars. Caster really helps a drift car by making it self-steer better. When you start to drift, you can simply let go of the wheel and let if feed through your fingers, and the car will counter faster than if you were steering it yourself. Caster also gives you more negative camber as the wheel turns, which helps front grip. More caster helps the car turn in better and also makes the car more stable.
Offset
Don’t run very low wheel offsets to look hellaflush; it increases the scrub radius too much and hampers steering precision and can cause understeer and poor turn-in when done to the extreme. Don’t go crazy with lip and wheel spacers.
Rear-wheel Camber
On a drift car, you want to run the rear camber as close to zero as possible. This will usually give you the best tire wear and best forward bite. If you want a little more side grip, you can run some negative camber, but usually no more than 1 degree negative should be run. Don’t believe the negative camber hype — run little to no camber and you’ll be a better drifter.