Suspension Corner Balancing

always intended on building a corner balance scale setup but a friend of mine has one & I should be able to use his... realistically this isn't so necessary for anyone unless they have at least coilovers otherwise there is nothing to adjust, & even with coilovers if your careful about keeping the left & right symmetrical by counting threads then your going to be ok in the ballpark anyway really, this is more for the guys that are going to track there car & want to squeeze every last bit of performance & balance out of it, but then again to really do that can take swapping out spring rates multiple times too & other stuff like adjustable sway bars & such, every time something is adjusted or swapped then needs to be re weighed & adjusted again, this is only for the hard core really & a good scale setup will be $$$...
 
So Turbo, you would say not required for even the Forced Induction crowd? I would think higher speeds and g-forces would separate out the men from the boys, especially with our heavy platform. I'm thinking about it from a safety standpoint - handling the extra power we're throwing into it.

Not looking to buy a scale set-up, but should be able to find somebody in the city that does a corner balance. If you were going to pay for the service, what do you think would be fair? How many labor hours would you expect if the coil-overs required only minor adjustments?
 
yes, def should account for the drivers weight when aligning & balancing a performance car, super light weight cars this is way more critical than a behemoth like the fx though, where the driver is a much smaller percentage of the weight


my guy told me that he charges 250-300 to corner balance a car when I discussed this with him a while back, he's a little pricey but it does take a few hours & require specialized equipment that not to many will have either, so the kind of shop that has this kind of equipment & knowledge is the kind of shop that's going to charge good money for there services too...

as long as the springs are a good quality then it's safe to assume that there going to be ~equal left to right, as long as they are then it becomes critical that they are adjusted the same left to right as well, adjust one side then measure the collar to the opposite side. at that point I would say you shouldn't have to even bother with doing a full corner balance....

you are a somewhat hands on guy so you may be interested in building your own scale setup too which can be done for just a few hundred bucks really, they can be built with just cheap bathroom scales, but require you to leverage them to have them handle the weight, google around for home made corner balance scales & you should find some interesting stuff...

I'm not going to say that you don't need to bother with this at all, but really for the spring rates that your running it sure isn't all that critical either... it becomes much more critical when your using super stiff springs, picture a car stiff enough that if the ground is very uneven & crested then it will almost 3 wheel, that's the kind of application that this really becomes very critical for, your suspension is still very compliant & this really isn't so critical for you tbh...
 
that's a good read, he does show exactly how he does it, the problem is big $$ scales... I've looked at scales before & I really want a set too, but $$$, so a maybe at this point I guess :)

truth is though, if you measure accurately & set the struts to where the left & right are equal your going to wind up being less than 5% off I think, 46-54 for example is not that bad & most won't even feel or be affected by the difference, most cars on the road are off by the same or worse. this don't mean adjusting it isn't better, like anything else it's like fine tunning, good to do if you have the facility & want to really optimize, I do want to do mine when all set up too but at the same time I wouldn't worry that this was "needed" , it's more just tweeking & fine tunning...

spring rate, rebound & compression dampening, alignment & suspension geometry all have a greater effect on overall handling & ride stability, corner balancing should only be done after that's all dialed in really, the ultimate would be the facility to align & corner balance all together at the same time, as everything that is adjusted changes the specifications of everything else a slight bit here & there really. it's either that or get a base alignment, then corner balance, then check & tweek the alignment again.
 
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