Corner Balancing

[Bryannelsonlaw]

Can anyone recommend where to have my Lotus Exige corner balanced or are there any kind souls out there who would be willing to loan me their scales?

Bryan Nelson
720-0362
883-9299

[vic]

Hi Bryan, try calling Ron Carrol. I believe he has access to scales and may even come to you. Tell him i sent you. He knows his **** and is pretty reasonable. 530-210-3848

[Bryannelsonlaw]

Vic,

What about the guy you were telling me about who races a Lotus Exige? Does he have scales?

Bryan

[vic]

no he pays other people to work on his car. ron is your best bet. he has crew cheifed for some pro teams, such as tripoint when jeff altenburg won the world challenge touring car championship. he knows his **** from fwd to open wheel.

[AlexR]

How much does corner balancing help??

do you think it would be a benefit to a rally car? i have seperate adjustable preload and have thought about corner balancing but i didn't know if it would help as much on rough, uneven dirt , compared to a smoother track surface... ?

[Kevin M]

It would help. How much would depend on how far your car is out of cross-balance, and how much closer you can get.

[BillH]

How much does corner balancing help??

do you think it would be a benefit to a rally car? i have seperate adjustable preload and have thought about corner balancing but i didn't know if it would help as much on rough, uneven dirt , compared to a smoother track surface... ?

What Kevin said plus, if you haven't done it, you don't really know what set up you have good or bad. Everytime you adjust ride heigth with the coils, you're jacking weight somewhere.

[Dean]

Be aware that if you can only adjust ride height with the spring seat (pre-load adjustment) it can cause some wonky stuff especially if you have progressive or multi-rate springs.

[AlexR]

oh.

I have separate adjustable ride height from my preload.
rebound + compression adjustable (linked) 1-36 . No clue what I'm doing with it. i tend to drive a fairly up and down road and try full soft (which causes the car to get air and hit the front bumper into the dirt) and i crank it up until it feels that i travel less distance over a whoop before regaining control.

If anyone is fairly good at "seat of pants tuning" like that I'de love some help tuning my car. you can get a fun lil dirt drive out of it and maybe some beer or something. :)

And i've been adjusting ride height quite a bit lately. i think i bent something, or damaged a fender as when i measure as per service manual it (center of axle nut to fender arch) it will say one side is like a 1/8" higher than the other, then i measure the coil overs adjusted ride height and they are the same. :eek: or vice versa...

Also i think i keep setting my car too low, as i tend to do a lot of exhaust damage.

Last time i put my car on some scales with me and a navigator in the car. the front was really close ... (i'll have to look at my weight sheet when i get home) but i seem to recall the front right being 15 pounds light. something like 795 : 810
and the rear was fairly different at like 550 : 510 .. guess all the numbers were higher with driver+navi but it was 2720. since then i've added a few more bars to the roll cage. intercom fire extinguishers, spill kit, first aid kit. i added the weight mostly on the right rear based upon the first measurements.

When i finally get back to reno/tahoe for a few weeks i'm planning on doing a final ride height adjustment and taking my car into Cory @ Nissan for an alignment. the 3 year deal from tire plus is great, but they always half ass it. and i think my caster is slightly out from one side to the other.

thanks for the info :)

[BillH]

Doing the shock adjustment over the whoops is great, you should be doing it in some corners too. At least you're doing test days.

IMO, you should find a different way to work with your ride height, measuring from the ground to a point on the chassis. The enviroment you drive in is fairly harsh, fenders can move around.

15 lbs. difference in the front isn't bad at all for a rally car, you may be able get it closer as long as the adjustments don't don't mess up cross weights,etc. If you can't, I wouldn't worry about it much.
I'd rather have the front weights closer than the rears.

Just my opinions, all of my dirt racing was on 2 wheels.

[Dean]

Ok, great that you can adjust each seperately.

Cross weight is everything if you can't move weight around the car. You would like LF+RR = RF+LR plus or minus 50lb or less as raced mid stage(Fuel, occupants, spares, etc...) LF vs. RF or LR vs. RR weights or F vs. R are much less important if at all.

On pre-load, make sure L & R spring length is the same when springs are uncompressed. If not, adjust preloaded length accordingly per side.

Since you are jumping, you have slightly different damper requirements. You would love to have a damper that is much stiffer from full extension to nuetral for landings and softer neutral to full compression for bumps. (OK, that is over generalizing, but you get the idea.)

In general, you want the dampers as soft as possible while keeping optimal tire contact and minimal over oscillation. Way to many people think firmer is better because they have better "feel" of the road/break away. That feel often just means more of the road is being transferred to the car rather than absorbed as it should be by the suspension.

Bill is right that corners are important as well as bumps. They typically relate to slow speed compression vs high for bumps, so if you can't adjust those separately, it is a balancing act. For tarmac, you might hedge towards cornering, for dirt, you might favor bump handling.

[BillH]

If you do decide to put the car on scales, disconnect the swaybars first or at least one side.
When you're done reattach the bars. With the driver/nav weight in the car, the bars should have no bind (neurtal) when you put them back on.
This may or maynot be easy to do depending on how your bars are bolted on.

[Kevin M]

On that note, with Subarus it's easier to loosen or drop the brackets on the bar instead of the endlinks themselves.

[Dean]

On that note, with Subarus it's easier to loosen or drop the brackets on the bar instead of the endlinks themselves.Huh? One nut/bolt loosens every Subaru endlink I have ever had. Bars won't drop with less than 4 bolts, and often have some gotcha.

[Kevin M]

Two bolts for front endlink mounts, and you don't have to worry about bind and realigning them to put them back. Plus they're a little easier to get too. Not that disconnecting the endlinks doesn't work, but if it was me this is how I'd do it.