Basal Skull

As advertised, have bought myself some new tools and played some this afternoon. Did the corner weights/ride height adjustments today, great fun.

pics and print out of values achieved for corner wts, ride height- what do you guys think?
Relatively straight forward, had to redo once since I forgot to disconnect the sway bars.

I could have improved on the cross weight but wanted to keep the front side to side weights close (as recommended by Jeff Alton - Turn3 Autosport, who helped me get/pick out the equipment).


The camber/toe/caster values are what I want to achieve (and how my car had been set up previously) - haven't done/checked that part yet - will have to wait probably until next weekend.

TurboLaal

Wow! That is an awesome set up!!! Nice job

Kein_Ersatz

Wow! +1

Many shops / amateur race crews would wish for such a tool selection.

DM993tt

the kidding around is pretty much over.... serious setup.

amokwa

BS,

Impressive, can you tell me where you bought your lift ? What make is it ? That is exactly what I have been looking for.

Basal Skull

Did the toe adjustment in the rear last night, pretty easy actually with the tarret pieces. Woke up thinking about it this morning and remembered I forgot to remove my rear speakers (I have bookshelf speakers in the back foot well), and not sure how well the water bottles and metal weight (from my weight set) I used in the driver's seat work; so will redo the corner balance and ride height again with an assistant reading off the scale with me in my gear in the driver's seat. So cool to be able to do this stuff. Enjoying/savouring every adjustment!

Basal Skull

the lift is a lift king portable scissor (not really portable, the pump is on a dolly that can be hooked onto the lift to move around - but really awkward/heavy).http://liftking.ca, it's a Canadian company, not exactly sure where it is actually made, they also have a US website (actually cheaper on the US website despite the CAD being about equal now).

amokwa

Thanks Basal

Droops83

Wow, that is an impressive home alignment setup!

I have all of the same equipment at my shop, in addition to a Hunter alignment rack.

I have not had much time to play with the Hubstands, but they are very trick. I will be bringing them to the track in the future if I ever get my 944 Spec car done.

Don't sweat getting your corner balance down to the last hundredth of a percent on a street car. Event if you have all solid suspension bushings, there are many variables, and 50.2% is pretty good!

The Smart Strings take a bit of patience at first to get them perfectly square, but once you have set them up a few times it can be done relatively quickly. It helps to mark the front and rear frame adjustments with a Sharpie or paint so they can be quickly adjusted to the 993 front and rear openings/bumpers. We have the markings color coded to different Porsche models for quick adjustments.

I assume that your desired toe settings are in millimeters? Make sure you know what size wheels those measurements are supposed to be for, and mark the toe sticks appropriately.

Those are some nice track settings, but remember that all of the negative camber combined with toe-out will shred up the inside edges of your front tires pretty quickly with street driving. However, with your home alignment shop I suppose you could change it back and forth pretty easily if you want to!

Ernie J

No subsitute for HubStands ! Just makes the job so much easier. Use them everyday.

Turn3 Autosport

Ryojo,

Nicely done!! The set up looks great, and now you can play with it all you want to tweek it.

Thanks for the business!

I agree with Ernie, we use HubStands and Smart Strings in our shop and they are excellent!

Cheers

Basal Skull

Thanx for the encouragement guys. Great to be able to tinker with these new toys, I really get lots of satisfaction doing stuff for myself. I should be able to get out to the garage a couple of hours tonight. Chris (Droops) you're right the toe is in mm, will adjust to -1 mm (8 minutes) in the front and 2mm (about 15 minutes) in the rear, for 18 inch wheel/markings on the hubstands. (good thing you mentioned it since initially I was thinking it was degrees but that would be way to much!!). So - 1 mm means 2mm difference between the measurements from the strings comparing the leading and trailing edges at the 18 inch mark - right?
The hubstands are great, can't imagine doing this without. The lift is great too. (thanx again for setting me up with all of this Jeff!)

Basal Skull

Well it appears I'm still a little confused with the toe units and where to measure. I think I've got it now...
-1mm on 18 inch wheel = 6 minutes, and the 1mm is the difference between the leading and trailing edge of the wheel (not 2mm) (toe out). 2mm on a 18 inch wheel = 18 minutes and the 2 mm is the difference between the leading and trailing edge of the wheel. If my calculations/trigonometry is correct... 6 and 18 minutes appear reasonable looking at alignment specs I've seen posted. Can anyone confirm?

Basal Skull

Well I'm done!
Just need to put the wheels back on.
Doing this without the hubstands (taking wheels on and off) would have been a real pain. Hubstands are highly recommended.
The alignment (toe) using smartstrings seemed pretty accurate, just need to decide on which side of the string you're making measurements from. And to have the hubs/hubstands flat so the toe bars are close to level.
The camber adjustment is straight forward but is a little bit of an 'art'... depending on your gauge and where you make the measurements it will change by a 10's of minutes easily. Small imperfections/even with hubstands (which are aluminum) can bend slightly giving inconsistent results when remeasuring/reloading the suspension. I used a magnetic level on the hub/brake disk but also need to mind any imperfections/wear on the brake disk which can throw numbers off.
The corner wt/ride hight was relatively straight forward to do with the hubstands/scales I used. Did it with the sway bars disconnected. I can remove any preload with the adjustable links in the rear but the front sways don't have adjustable links and it throws the corner wt numbers off once weight is loaded (have you guys seen adjustable links for the front?). Don't quite know what to do about that.
The steering rack locking nut I made was useful. https://rennlist.com/forums/showthre...ferrerid=28499
Looks like my car weighs about 3046lbs with 1/2 tank of fuel (spare removed). (I took the average wt between the wheels/tires I use most frequently - and I weigh 165 with gear (lost wt recently!)). I did the corner wt/ride height/alignment adjustments with 165lbs of weight from my weight set on the seat/foot well (I used water bottles initially since I had them in the garage as in the pic above but one started leaking!)
The ride height I did with the hubstands using a correction factor so will reconfirm after putting wheels on.
Great fun and can make adjustments pretty easily whenever I want, and doing it next time will be much quicker!

Droops83

Nice work. That is a pretty aggressive setup in terms of toe. What kind of tracks are you planning on running? The toe-out in the front will be nice on tighter tracks but may cause a bit of wandering/instability on higher speed tracks.

Do you have stock rubber bushings in the rear or are there any solid bushings in there? Stock KT bushings? 0.3 degrees of toe-in is quite a bit, and might be a bit much if you have solid bushings.

However, now that you have a home alignment shop you should be able to make changes easily if need be! It is fun to play with alignment settings and feel the handling difference. Small changes can make a significant difference in feel, especially withe rear engine 911 platform.