axl911

All,

I need a bit of advice on corner balancing. My car is a 993 with Bilstein & HR springs.

The front sway has fix end links while the rears are adjustable. So when doing corner balance, should I just disconnect the rear and leave the front bar in place?

I am thinking that since the front sway is not adjustable, it can affect the corner weight of the car by exerting force on the suspension. And I don't want to disconnect it only to have it exert the force on the suspension after the balance...thereby changing the corner weight again.

Am I thinking right? Or should I disconnect the front also (this would be a real big pain).

thanks,
anthony

CaptainGSR

Are you doing your own corner balancing?

axl911

I am going to attempt to do my own balancing. It sounded pretty easy.

Stealth 993

Leave everything attached. The drop links are for preload, they do no affect the bars roll rate. You also need 1/2 tank of gas, & drivers weight in the drivers seat.

Remember you are doing cross weights, not equal weight. Mine is set up to put a little more up front to relieve some understeer.

axl911

Stealth 993,

I am concerned that the preload will affect the corner balance. IS this right?

Stealth 993

I guess if they are super tight & adding spring rate then yea, but if you hook them up after a corner balance, it will change the balance. Really the drop links are just there to make the bar level after you lower & align the car. They should not be adding spring rate when sitting at ride height.


Basically if your SB are adding spring rate @ static ride height, your bars are set up wrong.

Steve Weiner-Rennsport Systems

Certainly preload CAN affect corner balance and thats why its so important to disconnect one end of the bars before starting the job.
Its possible to get an accurate corner weight without the need for adjustable droplinks,......IF one spends the requisite time,..

For coilovers, the rear swaybar mounts usually need some adjustment and thats a bit of a PITA to do. Thankfully, once all done, its not something you need to do all over again.

jscott82

Unless you have a drive on lift (one where you can get under the car while its setting on its wheels) setting corner balance is almost impossible (impractical). take a look at the steps below, and you’ll see that having to raise, lower, and settle the car between each step would be horrendous.
1) Disconnect one side of each sway bar (now would be a good time to check that the sway bar is not binding too)
2) Put car on scales
3) Set car weight (fuel, driver, co-driver, etc) to exact race conditions
4) Set ride height (work your way around the car at least twice)
5) Adjust corner balance (if inexperienced, this can take 10 or 15 tries)
6) Ride height will now be wrong... go back to step 4
7) Once ride height and corner weight are correct you can reattach the sway bars. Make sure your sway bar perches (or adjustable drop links) are adjusted so that there is 0 preload on the bar (the bolt should just slip in). i don’t know about other shocks, but this was a major problem with pss-9s... if the rear perch needed to be adjusted, the only way to do it was remove the shock, adjust and start all over.... very tedious....

Its bad enough with the car sitting static on the scales where you can simply move from shock to shock adjust and watch the scale move.... but if you have to lift, adjust, drop, reset, measure.... you will be pulling your hair out pretty quickly....

just my 2 cents....

oh and btw: keep in mind, the only thing you can do here is adjust the diagonal sums (corner balance)... there is no such thing as moving weight fore, aft, or left right. The sum of front, rear, left, or right will be constant... the only way to change that is to physically move weight within the car.

EDIT to answer your original question.. if your fronts aren’t adjustable, I would do everything as i outlined, then, with the car still on the scales, attach the front bar. If the weights move significantly (>10lbs) then you need to invest in adjustable drop links.... otherwise don’t worry about it.

jscott82

One more clarification…

I saw your post on the race forum about the curved drop links.... Straight links work just fine in a C2 (not so sure about a C4 or turbo though).