Corner weight and alignment

It was time for a final balance and alignment so I brought the car home, where I have a laser alignment machine I picked up for a few hundred bucks from a garage that was upgrading. But first I needed to corner balance the car and for that I borrowed my car club digital scales. I took 170 lbs of ballast and added it to the drivers seat to simulate my weight. I followed the advice in this Grassroots Motorsports Article: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/articles/understanding-corner-weights/

I inflated the tires to 30 psi to because an under or over inflated tire will alter the results. The sway bar can throw off your results as well so it needs to be disconnected.

I put the car on the scales and bounced it up and down to get the suspension settled. The scales have a cross weight function and all I had to do was adjust the left rear and right front pushrods to get the perfect 50% crossweight.

Here is a pic of the scales display. The bottom right number is the percentage of crossweight, a perfect 50%. Also note the individual weights of the 4 corners. I'll save you from getting out the calculator, the total weight is 2353 lbs and the front/rear weight balance is 53%/47% including 170 lb driver.

Then I attached the laser alignment heads to the 4 wheels. The heads have a runout function where you rotate the wheels so the heads can work out if your wheels are bent or the clamps are not perfectly centered.

Yup, it's old and beat up but I had it calibrated and it's accurate.



The car is so easy to align. I just had to add a couple of shims on the top A-arms to get -2 degrees camber then spin the tie rods to adjust toe. Also, it's amazing how close I got the rear axle centered using only a measuring tape. All I had to do was rotate the passenger side bars half a turn each to square the diff. The final alignment numbers are -2.17 camber and .14" total toe out in the front and zero camber and toe in the back.