Did a bunch of reading, looking to narrow choices.

If the car is only going to be lowered (very) slightly, is bump steer adjustment to compensate really necessary? This will be a DE track car driven on street as well on rubbish roads, so will never be truly "low' in the dedicated track sense.

Asked a different way, how much lower from stock (in mm) does bump steer even become an issue. The initial plan is 100% to focus on safety and alignment stability. No suspension work at first, plan to just learn the car.

On this basis, the Tarret base links (no bump steer) seem like a no brainer at $395 a pair. And locking plates, of course.

http://www.tarett.com/items/996-997-...lnk-detail.htm

The bump steer versions add significant $$, same for the Champion parts which if I am not mistaken are $595 a piece.

Thanks in advance for input - just looking to spend the money where it matters. Suspension down the road is another issue... just looking for stable alignment for now.

Cheers

Matt

 

You ask a valid question. I think the ultimate question to derive the proper course of action is.... will you progress to " more than say 5 DE " a year? Thus will venture into the OH, I need to off set the bump steer concern. If it were mine, I would simply step up for the bump steer unit and have it all done. Especially if the price point is so small.

 

Simple answer is you don't need any, but,
Rennline links are hard to beat for the money http://www.rennline.com/Adjustable-R...oductinfo/S62/

I have(but haven't installed yet) the Champion links, more money ($595 a pair) but beautiful parts and a 'better' way of adjusting... http://www.championmotorsport.com/pr...cms-tstr-1.htm

 

Thanks guys - this is helpful. So the Champion are $595 a pair (not a piece) - that was not clear from their site, I misunderstood.

That's just $200 more for the pair, not the end of the world if significantly better parts.

I am trying to visualize the advantages of these - sorry for the silly questions, but can someone elaborate:

- Champion links will permit washers to adjust for bump steer if I lower ride height in the future?

- how do pinch bolts differ from what's on the Tarett, in practice?

- to adjust, these look like they need to be disconnected from the suspension?

Curious as to how the last 2 points affect ease of getting a good alignment?

Thanks again for being patient with me, lots to learn.

Cheers

PS - last question, I swear - still need locking plates with these, right?

Matt

 

Champion did not provide washers or setup instructions with mine. However, dealing with parts everyday, I would say there is provision for about 1cm worth of spacer to change taper height/bump steer...I will try to reach out to Champion for verification.
Lock-nuts like Tarett can/do slightly change torqued length and are harder to adjust on car. Pinch-sleeve style is more accurate when locking and easier to adjust as you release the pinch bolts one-handed.
Both adjust on car by twisting the centre adjustment bar to lengthen/shorten, then lock-down.

 

IMO, changing the thrust arm bushings and LCA inner bushings to solid/monoball is the best change you can do....makes the toe more consistent and offers nicer feedback

 

Alingment, only use a shop that utilizes an electronic alingment system. Last year, I had mine corner balance and alingment done.
The steering wheel was an 1/ 4 inch off from center from this race shop. This shop utilize strings as if they were at the track. I had my Porsche Master tech redo the alignment due to the steering wheel. He uses the electronic alingment at the dealership and corrected the steering wheel to 100 % on center and found that the right rear was a few degrees off.....

 

I respectfully disagree 100%...string is king, but you have to know how/spend time to setup the strings...
Completely idiotic having the wheel off centre and such, even the biggest rookie can do a decent alignment...

 

^^ agree with Rob. String is the way to go. Steering wheel off centre is woeful and one of my pet peeves when having an alignment done. So many shops fail to get this right.

 

Well, there's always two views to any item. As for the steering wheel being off 1/4 or less inch, I'm just being picky. Regarding strings being better than an electronic instrument having to ability to measure in degrees and minutes is like a human eye having the ability to search the heavenly body better than the Hubbell telescope.

 

string is better than machine
you want bump adj rear toe links. those also come with monoball on both ends not just one.
i prefer the bump adj one from tarrett. i feel it's better than anything out there, inc the cup (champion one) but that's jusy my pref, ymmv
if you run adj toe lines, you MUST have locking plates. one reason to change oe toe to adj toe is that you eliminate the eccentric on the oe toe (doesn't hold alignment as well). once you have after mkt toe linx, the toe is adjusted by the length of the toe, as such the eccentric is no longer used, so removed it and replace with locking plate and adj toe only via the length of the after mkt toe links.

 

I have these from RSS. Quality is perfect and I have been using them for over 2 years with no issues. Per website they are $495.

http://rss.rpmware.com/rss/rss-adjus.../i-398286.aspx

Do your toe links. It's a safety concern.

 

I can attest to this. Movement of the eccentric bolt on one of my rear toe links resulted in a near new R888 failing at the track leading to a 100+ mph spin. Not fun.

 

Great old read's below. The two threads are related and started by the previous owner of the car that now sits in my garage FWIW I have 15mm of spacers in my toe links and run only slightly lower than stock. Rob makes a good point. removing all the rubber, at least on that lower control arm including the caster puck is just as important as the bump adjustment correction. Once you control all the movement of that arm you can insure toe is as accurate as possible throughout the whole range of movement of the suspension.

https://rennlist.com/forums/996-gt2-...ump-steer.html

https://rennlist.com/forums/996-gt2-...work-play.html

as for Strings vs. Rack...I'll take a modern alignment rack all day every day over strings. I owned a set of smart strings for years but you have to be super tedious in the setup to even get ready to measure, then if you even remotely bump something while crawling in and out under the car doing your own version of a limbo competition you have to completely start over from scratch in setting up the strings again. Once you get the process down for one particular car it's a little easier but I just got sick of the whole procedure and was lucky enough to find a shop that will let me under the car to do my own alignments on their rack. Not to mention to do it right and have all the tools you need the investment for strings and camber gauge is $600-700. I'm doing an alignment like once a year it's simply not worth it for me.

 

Go with he pinch bolt PMNA 997 Cup toe arms with bump steer. These are the real deal and only marginally more money than the Champion pieces (which are copies of the PMNA parts). I think I paid about $800 for these a few years ago. Fronts were about $500. The mono ***** are top notch quality, German made.

The Champion pieces are nice if you wanna save a little money. I'm not a fan of the Tarret toe arms. I've run them and bent both of the rotating center pieces which seem to be the weak point on those. The inner mono ***** used on the Tarett arms also developed play after a few years. Just my experience. Use the Tarett lock out plates in conjunction with any of the adjustable toe arms.

My race shop does laser alignments which are based off of the wheel hub which ensures that everything is perfectly square. Using this method eliminates any discrepancies present when you take measurement off of the wheel lip as most wheels are never perfectly square and contain a little runout. This beats the machines that clip on to the wheel rim and also strings which measure off the wheel rim.

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