RKD in OKC

Cross weights were good, don't expect anything front to rear. I've corner balanced before.

Local tire shops have no-lift Hunters, BUT refuse to do anything but stock alignment.

Found an alignment shop about 45 minutes away that will do custom alignment. They have those things they hook to the wheels and roll the car backwards for cars that don't like being lifted.

Trying to be patient and let the local Porsche shop figure it out. He hasn't charged me anything yet.

mark kibort

So, your shop has the old stuff with the pads where the car needs to be jacked up to get it on the system? Our shop has that stuff ,and it doesnt work that well for 928s, if at all. you never know, you might get lucky, but you will see.

Herman K

In the past 3-4 years I always have farmed out my alignment work but for what ever reason it never felt perfect.

I've bought all the tools

Now...

I'm doing my own alignment educated by (Andrew Olson's video and Capt earl's web information) it has taken quite a bit of practice and for the longest time I still had a slight pull to the right. In my case I cleaned and smoothed the surface area of the lower control arms and ball joint excentrics put a little never seize lub between the two mating surfaces and inside the excentrics turning area. This made the excentrics easy to turn and made all the adjustments needed very responsive to the slightest turn of the excentrics. Only than I found I could realy fine tune all the settings. I backed of complety on the castor (as suggest by Capt'n Earl - my measurements indicate 5degrees on both sides) and the car now tracks hand free and feels perfect.

BTW; this is on the 17" wheels and tires I bought from you

Hope you'll get it under control soon..

RKD in OKC

Yeah, sure, rub it in. Hope you like em. This all started with new wheels and tires!

dr bob

So this begs the quastion of checking the 'new' wheels for runout radial and axial. A little bit of axial runout will make it a matter of luck if you happen to get it right.

Plus--

My experience mirrors Herman K's. I went twice to a local Hunter guy and it was 'perfect' per the data sheets. Couple sets of tires later, I'd made my own fixtures and did it myself. It took a while the first time, mostly because I had trouble believeing that the toe was so far off of what the Hunter said. Earl's alignment page is excellent, and a great place to get some practical knowledge of what's involved. I watched Andrew's video and got lost along his way, but based on thepublic comments it must be better than I am at comprehending.

Do a search here on "DIY Alignment". There are laser fixtures in Dallas area, and many other places around by now. I have materials to make a few more sets when I get time, but need to find lasers to use now that H-F doesn't carry the cheap laser levels anymore. Any laser pointer will do, but I need to make rigid mounts for whatever I find. I've seen a few serious green north-of-hobby-grade lasers that would be awesome but they risk damaging the garage furniture.

Mark, the corner weighting tip from Earl assumes that you car isn't too twisted. Your results are not typical. My car came up almost perfect (<20# diagonal imbalance) after counting turns Earl's way. 200# in the driver's seat and three-quarters of a tank of gas. It will be interesting to see how straight your new car is compared to the Holbert chassis prior to the crunch.

mark kibort

Ive done 4 of these cars , and they are all the same. if you look at my corner weights for my 84 part euro 5 liter and the holbert car, they are almost idenical. Scots , same thing. One thing i noticed is that you said 3/4 tank of gas. thats about 70lbs more gas than I ever run. see why corner balancing is so crazy for a street car? all you need is a half a tank of gas more than me or your setting or a passenger and everything is messed up. however, its good to find gross issues so you are not really messed up with diagonals or they get worse with passengers, or gas.

As far as alignement, the easiest way is to do the level and magic marker technique. On my car and two hunter machines I was almost dead on for camber and toe. Now, I had no way to check their relationship to the rear wheels, but once that is set, toe and camber are easy to adjust and check. (level on wheel and tire, mark the ground front to rear. check distance of frot marks to rear marks. difference / 19" or so, and that with a calculator push the INV TAN function and you get your toe in degrees. basically, you want about 1/16" toe in after the car is settled. any more and you start wearing the outside edge of the tire, up to 1/16" toed out and you start wearing the inside edge. with my race rubber and pick up of rubber from the race track, this was very easy to see.

dr bob

Pay no attention to a toe setting method that involves a magic marker and 19" spacing. The magic marker line is wider than the 1/16" difference you might try to measure. Oh, and the car has to be on LEVEL smooth surface, side to side, at both ends of the car. If you get a good toe setting your way it's dumb luck. PLEASE STOP PREACHING THIS METHOD. It's probably fine to see if you can still get the car home with the bent tie-rod, no more. Someone reading it might actually believe that it works and try it at home for their street car.

mark kibort

Bob, yes the line is wider than 1/16th" , but that makes no difference as it doesnt matter the thickness of the line, is consistant, repeatable and very accurate as proven by the comparisons to the Hunter machine. (within 10%). (just as if you had a laser dot that was 1/16" in diameter. You mark the line at the bottome of the flat surface of the level and if the line follows the straight edge the position is correct. thickness doesnt matter, you measure from the edge of the line, no matter how thick the line and the measurements will be the same. ( I could use a spray can of black paint and the edge would be dead nuts on!) Try it sometime, you will be surprised how accurate and repeatable the results are. The bent tie rod was only .25" toed in thats way way off. no matter how many times i measurd the rear toe, it was 3/16" toed in. I wish it was more like 1/8, but it wasnt. 1/6th of an inch in "Toe land" is a lot.

You have been bashing the technique without fully understanding how its done. Ill demonstrate it at sharkoberfest. Just bring your print out and Ill match the toe results. ( or even tell you if they are off! )

Again, try it, you will like it .

EDIT: oh yeah, when im checking camber, ill reverse the cars position on the driveway (mine is very flat by the way, so use your garage floor if you can) and measure again and take an average.

mk

dr bob

Mark--

Next discussion needs to go to a separate thread.


To your comments:

The width of the laser dot is less of a consideration when you are shooting targets that are ten feet from the wheel center. Percentage of possible error goes way down when you are looking for 3/8 to 1/2 inch marks. The problems I have with your method are many-- the marks you make are too close together to allow accurate measurement. Your car at the track is not level side-to-side and you are not on a flat surface, so if your suspension position is not exactly correct, your camber and toe readings will be off. This effect is worse when the car is already lowered on the suspension as yours is. You are making your marks on the rough ground, so your pen is guided by irregularities in the surface. You propose just pushing the level against the face of the tire and extending the mark to the ground; The face of the tire is uneven and flexible, so you are subject to error if pressure isn't applied perfectly and consistently; You MUST use a hard reference surface (wheel face). The pen mark width on the ground is wider than the delta you are looking for between marks front and back, so you end up guesstimating at where the line really is. Even if everything else were perfect, if you are off by half a line width anywhere, your toe can easily be off by more than a degree in either direction. Your math may be sound and your luck may be good, but the method isn't suitable for someone else. Way too many variables and places to screw up. You never drive tires long enough to see the real effects of your methods, since you scrub them up so well racing on them. For those of us that plan to (and do) get 25k miles on performance street tires (PS-2's in my case), accuracy is very important, obviously much more so than for you.

Again, I'm sure that your method is adequate to see if you can get home from the track with damaged steering or something. For those reading at home, PLEASE DON'T TRY MARK'S EMERGENCY RACETRACK SURVIVAL JUST-TO-GET HOME TOE MEASURING METHOD unless it's just to get to a real alignment following suspension work or something. Instead, grab Captain Earl's excellent treatise and method description on 928 alignment, or follow the guidance in the DIY thread minus the MK discussion, and do it like you mean it.

S4ordie

No garage floor or driveway should be considered level. It may feel. look, flat but indeed all are sloped to facilitate water runoff. So to me, if having a perfectly level surface is necessary for any of the above mentioned DYI alignments, you need to spend some time confirming your surface is indeed level/flat. YMMV

AO

Been busy... sorry I'm late.

This is totally false. You should not have to "unweight" anything to adjust the eccentrics. That said, on the rear toe, I have now seen two (one mine, one another person) where the inner eccentric gets sloppy and out of phase with the outer eccentric. Slight digression here...

As I said, I have seen two cars now where the inner eccentric gets sloppy and out of phase with the outer. This condition can lead to the eccentrics cam-locking and preventing them from being adjusted further.

So if you tech is having problems adjusting the rear toe, I'll bet your eccentrics are toast and need to be replaced.

mark kibort

+1

mark kibort

for camber maybe, but its not critical for toe, other than extra weight on the corners that might flex the suspension enough to change things. BUT, if it is close, toe and camber can be accurately measured. as I mentioned, Ive match the numbers that the hunter machine produced several times. camber was the only one that was more difficult, as I had to take an average with two measurements with the car in two directions on the driveway.

mk

mark kibort

Bob,

No, i dont use the tire, i use the rim. the mark on the ground can be on a rough surface, as I said, I could use a spray can of paint, and it would be as accurate. We are marking the EDGE of the level as it touches the ground. as long as we mark this edge on the ground, and know where it is, it will reflect the wheel spacing front and rear and you can trig out the toe, either in degrees or distance. The pen mark thickness has NO bearing on the accuracy. We look for the edge of the level position,. Now, as far as the distance Im using to calculate the toe, 19" spacing is plenty. we are not measuring nanometers, we are trying to find and control about 1/16" . Certainly my way is more accurate than any of the lifting techniques the certified mechanics are using, yet you didnt bash on them now did you ?

You are trying to be precise on something that changes with weight, conditions, speeds, and movment of the car. bump steer, braking cornering, passengers, bushing wear, ride height, all are HUGE factors on the changes of the alingment. you get your alignement within 1/32" based on a 19" measuring point and you will be just fine if you are racing or driving you $50k GTS across country. Again, Ill prove it to you at sharktoberfest, you just bring your aligment print out and Ill match it using this easy to use technique.
Again, what it is not good for is setting aligment with all 4 wheels. its only good for toe and camber. (not caster either, and for small adjustments as well)

Want proof, 30,000miles of no uneaven wear by using race rubber on the street as well. If it didnt work, those tires would have been skinned alive. BUT, using this technique, I was able to keep the car in tires and make small adustments for handling or to change wear patterns. I changed a tie rod out and was able to match the results of a hunter machine when I was pressured by my buddies to check it. why is that? dumb luck?

mk