Cory M

I'm not sure I understand. How do you adjust the corner weights if you aren't changing the ride heights (and you aren't moving around ballast)?

analogmike

No, you don't want to change the ride heights at all when corner balancing.

you will find one diagonal is too heavy, say 40 pounds per corner. So you lower that diagonal by a bit and raise the opposite diagonal the same amount, keeping all 4 corners at the same height if done right.

See my old article for more info:

http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarti...nment_tips.htm

analogmike

p.s. corner balancing has nothing to do with ballasting. They are independent operations.

mark kibort

Well, these smart axxes here are seeming missing a few things here and are not helping you. My point was to get the real numbers to see if you could improve your settings by others here that have a lot of set up and racing experience. As was pointed out, there is no one perfect setting, otherwise, there would be no such thing as a test day. You would just set up the car to "perfect" settings and you would have a perfect car. When I built my car the second time, it was as fast as it has evolved to be the first session out, because I used the same settings that proved to be good for the 3 tracks I primarily visit in the prior car.

You might have a few settings that will be best for you and they might not be anywhere near the settings you have today that give you equal cross weights.

Were you really using the rocker panel measurements to determine rake and ride heights? If so, they can easily be off from the actual ride height measuring pads.

There are so many factors with all of them interacting, its very difficult to even pick out a few that would be dominant. spring rates and charatceristics individually per corner, shocks, swaybars, camber settigns, tire quality, HP, brake power, driver ability, all will effect how the car handles and transfers weight. sure, its generally good to have a reasonalbly level car and near equal cross weights to start, but in the end, you might end up with someting different that handles better. In otherwords, get it close, and go out and test it and see how it does, hopefully comparing to a previous version of the car, or close competitors. take tire temps, and try and make consistant laps.
Ive driven the same car with pretty different settings, both doing the same job, just a little differently.

have fun!

mk

mark kibort

I agree. But, if you have one light corner, and a diag. opposing corner that happens to be heavier than the opposite side, you can just lower that corner and kill two birds with one stone. sure, it might now be 1/4" lower at that corner, (and you could adjust the others to counteract that change) but, you may never get it perfect and perfect might not be best. Its truely an artform when doing it right.
Im still learning and there are lots of factors. the most frustrating is that the car might not settle for a few laps, so it takes a lot of time to do it right.

joseph mitro

ah, ok I see what you're saying now. the article is helpful...i printed it off for future reference.

I think my goal is the same as your goal, just with different means to an end. you're proposing making small changes in all four corners to achieve balance and equal cross weights while not affecting the total ride height.
i'm proposing a single corner change of larger magnitude to achieve the same outcome.

but the ride height/rake will be more affected with my method.

to make such fine adjustments you really need very precise tools. my scales are level, but my ride height and rake measurements are not super precise.

thanks for the help.



OK another question......when setting ride height is this with driver in the car? and do you set the height equally from side to side? or differently to account for weight of the driver?

Cory M

I understand what you are saying but I still don't understand how your method doesn't change the ride heights. For example, the car is sitting at the desired ride height at each corner but the balance is off. Using your method you lower the RF and LR, and raise the LF and RR by the same amount - how exactly have you not changed the ride heights? You have lowered it at the RF and LR, and raised it at the LF and RR. By making changes to both diagonals you have made a smaller change at each corner than if you just adjusted one diagonal, but you have still made changes to the ride height at all four corners. How do you define ride height? I'm talking about the height of the chassis at each corner.

mark kibort

good question/point
the only way to do that woud be to swap out springs.

I guess he is talking about the cross weights. that makes sense then. you could lower one diag. to zero and raise the other diag. and have the exact same ride height, but ugly cross weights. (i.e. titering on two wheels)

If its level on all 4'rs, and you need to change something, the ride height is going to change. curious to see if Im understanding Mike correctly

analogmike

If you do it evenly on all four corners, as in the article, the ride height will not change.

think about it : if you raise the RF/LR diagonal, the whole car will raise, EVENLY. Then when you lower the LF/RR diagonal, the whole car will come back down to where it started. that's why you have to use the formulas in my article and figure out how much to adjust to change the weights by X pounds.

I am not talking about ballasting, do that BEFORE corner balancing the car and before getting it level.

Also to answer a previous question, do the ride height AND corner balancing with the driver's weight in the driver's seat.

fatbillybob

90% of guys are doing this on their garage floors. Most of use will make sure the scale pads are dead level. But many times the point at where people measure ride height has not been checked for level. How many of you are shimming 8 spots on the floor?

joseph mitro

I used a 1x1" square aluminum tube, 8ft long and placed on top of the scales, as a reference point for ride height. though not perfect, this method should eliminate or drastically reduce inaccuracies of reference point if i were using the garage floor.

after reading the responses in this thread, however, I've been considering either buying or building a setup platform like longacre:

http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?tp...action=product

or

http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?tp...action=product

analogmike

I have the longacre adjustable pads that go under each scale. that allows you to get them totally level.



Once you are on the pads, the rest does not matter, but you do need a good place to measure ride height if the scales are not below a good suspension point.

joseph mitro

I thought about those levelers, but instead I just shimmed my scales with tiles and used a bubble level to make sure all four scales were completely level in reference to each other.

the aluminum tube does give me a stable, level reference point, it's just not ideal. gotta figure some way of getting accurate, repeatable results

Larry Herman

I have a similar setup, and I use a laser leveler to make sure that all 4 pads are at the exact same height and plane. I can also leave the laser in place and use that to measure suspension points to get pretty exact ride heights.

joseph mitro

that's a great idea, thanks!