Corner balancing alignment in Bay Area

**cvjoint** · December 21, 2017, 11:47 AM

Any recommendations for a place that can corner balance? Moving from DOT to Radial Slick and from 225 section to 355 section. It needs a thorough suspension re-calibration.

**2/3rdsCobra** · December 22, 2017, 12:33 PM

Not the in the Bay area, but a quick road trip south to Fresno/Madera to CaliberCustoms.com will have your Atom sorted in sort order. Shoot them a call with your needs. Tell Matt I sent ya.

**cvjoint** · December 22, 2017, 03:32 PM

Originally Posted by 2/3rdsCobra

Not the in the Bay area, but a quick road trip south to Fresno/Madera to CaliberCustoms.com will have your Atom sorted in sort order. Shoot them a call with your needs. Tell Matt I sent ya.

Oh, that's pretty far. Towing at 55 mph that's 10 hours roundtrip from SF

**sector: 4** · December 23, 2017, 04:48 PM

For sake of discussion, what would this "corner balancing alignment" consist of, exactly?

How is it different from a normal camber & toe alignment?

What's it going to accomplish for you that a normal alignment won't?

**2/3rdsCobra** · December 23, 2017, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by cvjoint

Oh, that's pretty far. Towing at 55 mph that's 10 hours roundtrip from SF

I will say that it will be worth your while. The owner, Matt is a very skilled craftsman and once you get there you'll be wanting him to do more stuff to your Atom.

Originally Posted by sector: 4

For sake of discussion, what would this "corner balancing alignment" consist of, exactly?

How is it different from a normal camber & toe alignment?

What's it going to accomplish for you that a normal alignment won't?

Corner balance uses shock/spring perch adjustment to transfer weight fore/aft and/or driver/passenger. If someone is doing it only once, then they are trying to balance the weight on each corner as much as possible to keep the workload as even as possible. Hardcore racers will set-up corner balance/alignment according to track layout.

**sector: 4** · December 23, 2017, 11:14 PM

With a driver on the left, and only adjusting springs, I'm guessing you'd have to lean the car over about 5 degrees or so to "balance it out" laterally, which will make the camber curves different left and right and will just look retarded on the street. Maybe retarded is OK on an SRA. Hey, I'm a poet and didn't know it, lol.

If you deviate from factory front/rear height settings enough to shift weight significantly, you're changing the roll centers and camber curves. Is this really taken into account? I doubt it.

Suspension movement is involved, so it's not enough to just measure the weight on each corner. Such adjustments need to be tested and tuned on a track, at the limit, by somebody who is consistent (really knows how to drive). I certainly wouldn't hand the keys to a stranger, tell him to drive it on the limit, and hope he doesn't crash my car while charging me a fortune for adjustments which aren't going to win me an F1 title. But that's just me.

**cvjoint** · December 26, 2017, 10:28 AM

Corner balancing is a fairly common practice, and a default practice for the quick guys. I'm just going to do one setting for all tracks. The Atom is great car to get seat time, I'd rather do back to back sessions than wrench on the car.

Alignment typically gives you only toe, camber, caster adjustment. This is the whole enchilada. For example, TMI has specs for ride height which no shop would touch for the fee paid for a basic alignment. While I'm sure the car wouldn't sit straight empty, when loaded with driver it should be more balanced. Thought experiment: if it looks crooked to you with driver in the seat then it will look crooked without driver once corner balanced. I honestly can't tell when cars are corner balanced just by looking at them.

**cvjoint** · January 4, 2018, 04:20 PM

Took the car out to Roger Kraus Racing, Roger Kraus Racing Ent., Inc.- Castro Valley, CA., since they were the only ones able to set the rear caster on my C7 Z. It took about 4 hours to corner balance.

Golden Nugget #1, the car has no caster adjustment, however there were at least 6 degrees on each front wheel with -2.5 degrees camber.

Golden Nugget #2, the top camber adjuster was maxed out at this point, but the bottom still had a bit more to go. Plenty of range for any setup.

Golden Nugget #3, the SRA has a 64/36 weight balance. Wow!

**2/3rdsCobra** · January 4, 2018, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by cvjoint

Took the car out to Roger Kraus Racing, Roger Kraus Racing Ent., Inc.- Castro Valley, CA., since they were the only ones able to set the rear caster on my C7 Z. It took about 4 hours to corner balance.

Golden Nugget #1, the car has no caster adjustment, however there were at least 6 degrees on each front wheel with -2.5 degrees camber.

Golden Nugget #2, the top camber adjuster was maxed out at this point, but the bottom still had a bit more to go. Plenty of range for any setup.

Golden Nugget #3, the SRA has a 64/36 weight balance. Wow!

I'm running 2.5 neg camber in front w/ 1.0 neg in rear. 0.0 total toe front/rear. Good to know about the caster. Just looking at the inside wheel locked, its face was completely flat against the ground, providing max grip available.