Alignment and corner balancing questions?

[JimWirt]

Has any one done this them selves? I've changed out the suspension on a  80sc and want to do the alignment and corner balancing myself. I've got scales and a chamber gage. I've set toe, caster and chamber before. What I need to know is do I set corner balances first then do regular alignment? Do I get it close on alignment first then do corner balances and set it again when done? I'll be using this car for auto crosses and de's ,so I want a track set up. Suggestions for ride height , toe and chamber would be nice too. What should I shoot for? Car is a stripped out sc coup with cage ,chamber plates , monoballs and 23 and 31 torsion bars. Car will be running on r compound tires.

[Darren]

I usually do my own alignment and it can be a pain sometimes.  I like to do it so that I can experiment with different settings -- which would cost a fortune to do through a shop.

I enjoy doing it myself, but you have to be careful especially with the rear toe, to get it just right.  If you end up in a rear toe-out under braking situation in a rear engine car, especially yours, life will get exciting fast!  Take it easy esp in braking zones when you first test out the new alignment until you're sure it's right.

As you are learning to do this, you may want to consider having a shop verify your settings after you complete your alignment just as a sanity check.   If you call around some of the local tire places and chain repair shops will do a printout of your alignment settings for free!

Always do the corner balance first.  There are some articles about doing it on the Internet, but the real key to the whole thing is thinking about the car like a table with 1 leg short.  It will wobble in the opposite direction, and those two legs it sits on when it wobbles have the most weight.

That's about how it works -- forget about trying to change side to side weight, you can only do that by moving weight in the car -- you can't do it by alignment.  So if the FR and RL added together are higher than the FL and RR added together then you need to lower the former or raise the latter.

The other pieces to consider are your overall ride height and rake fore/aft.  In terms of front ride height, ideally the tie rods will be parallell to the ground to minimize the changes of toe with ride height.  You can set the base ride height first by measuring from the ground to suspension points (not to the fender like some people do).  Once that is done, do the corner weights.

Don't forget to put weight in the driver's seat to simulate you in it.

After corner balance set your camber.  After camber is toe.  Camber is the most annoying thing to check and you need a good flat surface or a good gauge that will compensate.

I don't know about alignment settings on that car specifically -- I could guess but someone knows for sure.  You may want to consider reaching out to one of the guys who race SC's, or to Larry who is our club alignment expert.

[Larry Herman]

Jim, I do my own alignments and I have the car set on turnplates which sit on the scales so that I can play with the corner weights as I change the alignment settings. I have found that larger changes in camber, especially in the rear, can cause weight-jacking and will definitely change the corner weights.

If that is not an option, I would get the alignment close, set the corner-weights, and then check the alignment again.

For my Carrera, I ran -2.25 in the front and -3.25 in the back. I could never get enough camber in the front due to PCA rules, or I would have set that around -3.25 as well. You could probably run around -3 because your car is lighter than mine was, and you are running the same T-bars. I would also suggest 0 toe in the front and -1/8" overall toe-in in the back.

[JimWirt]

Where can I get these turnplates? Do they cause any surface damage on the scales. The fellow letting me use his would kill me if I damaged them and I don't want to pay for new ones.

[Larry Herman]

I bought inexpensive ones made by Rand from Summitcentral on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Rand-Whee...0207512120

They are heavy (50lbs each) but they work just as good as the $600 aluminum ones. I put them on top of the scales, and they just sit there and allow the car to slide around on them. If anything, they probably would prevent damage. What I do is setup the leveling pads with a laser, put the scales on them and put the turnplates on the scales. Then I zero the scales and lower the car onto the turnplates. A few jiggles to the car to settle the suspension and it is ready to go.

One important but overlooked item, make sure that all 4 tires have the same pressure in them. I like to have them hard (35 lbs or so).

[JimWirt]

So much for alignment, when I went to tighten the clutch cable one of the aluminum pieces that stick off of the transmission broke off. Looks like I have to take engine and transmission back out and get it welded some where. Any one know some one who can weld aluminium?

[Darren]

Ed at Tillson's -- he's a good welder.

[JimWirt]

Well I found out this is a bolt on part. 15 bucks thru pelican. So I don't have to take the engine and trans back out!