Testing, testing, testing. Seems like that is all we do here. Everytime someone thinks of something we test it. We go the track and test, we test on the dyno, we test on the street. I thought when highschool was over my testing was done

So, we are racing road course stuff now and of course with that you have to have the chassis set up correctly. Luckily I have Robert Fuller from Robispec driving and in charge of the alignment duties. I knew nothing at all about it. Robert, on the other hand, gets down and dirty with it and makes the cars fly.

Robert had been shipping his corner scales, laser toe gauges and camber/caster equipment back and forth to us each race. It got to be a PITA for him and us.

I finally broke down and bought all the equipment for our shop and have it here now. We can do corner scaling and full alignments now. It is actually very interesting.

Robert stayed after the last race we had with the Time Attack car and spent the day trying to make my pea sized brain comprehend how do an alignment. I finally grasped it when I had to do my car by myself.

At the shootout there were two guys that came here, Kevin Lawson and Trevor Jones. They had both just had alignments done at an alignment shop. Robert warned me that alignment shops don't get nearly as close as we can with this equipment and most do a half assed job. Well he was right.

I offered to check Kevin's first and it was so far out of whack. First off all the camber adjustment bolts in the rear were frozen solid to the inner bushing. There was no way the alignment shop moved them, the toe was off on both ends of the car too. Kevin was pissed at how bad it was.

We then did Trevor's car. His was also pretty bad. Rear tires were set to 0 toe but they were both pointing more than an 1" off to the right, measuring at the front spindle.

After the alignment Trevor's car finally broke into the 1.6 sixty foot times.

I also did my car which was really messed up. It was way off from trying to align it in a hotel parking lot at midnight. Here is what is crazy. Before I did the alignment my car on the dyno only made 415 whp/415 fl bls. The alignment was really bad. After the alignment I dyno'd again a few days later, nothing else changed. 451/450! It didn't dawn on me what could have made such a change until I remembered the alignment.

I don't know if that huge increase was from doing the alignment or not but I do know I didn't really change anything else. I had tuned it a little on the street but nothing that would give that much power.

After thinking of it more and more I believe it could very well have been from getting everything pointing where it needed to be.

If you think about 3,000 pounds sitting on four fairly wide tires, all of which have to accelerate a set of knurled rollers and each tire is pointing in a different direction it has to cause a tremendous amount of drag.

Something else. The EVO's are notorious for wearing inside front tires pretty bad. This can mostly be traced to a poor alignment right from the factory. For what it costs to have a real alignment done it would be worth the time and effort to have it done. Money you save in tires alone will make up for the cost.

As a side note. A typical alignment shop charges around $65. From what I have seen in my few short weeks of looking it is money that is not well spent. Robert says that is his experience too.

We do offer the service now, it is very time consuming but also very accurate.

We have gained speed/time on the drag strip on each car we have done so far. Of course a proper alignment for a road race car would be even more drastic but also driver dependent.

Cool stuff.

 

Robi Spec.....the best

 

I asked the same question for the Chicago-land area. I thought AMS might be able to shed some light on the subject but I have yet to hear anything.

 

David, can you please list the equipment purchased and price? I was just curious, because there aren't many options as far as professional alignments where I live.

 

But +35WHP on your dyno........?!?!?!!? I dont get it..

-edit- I thought about what David said, and it finally made sense to me. With all 4 wheels pointing in the proper direction there was less drag to move the entire vehicle. Now Im just paranoid about an alignment shop

 

I was just about to make a thread asking if anyone knows who does cornerbalancing in the chicago area. I am in need of an alignment and figured it would be good to do a balance as well.

 

Griffen Motorwerks has a custom alignment shop in Berkeley. They do cornerweighting also. They quoted me 250 for alignment and cornerweighting of my coilovers on the race car.

 

i am also curious about the chicago area.

 

Good deal, too bad you got me freaking out about who should align my car now.

That's odd... Because he explained his thinking pretty thoroughly.

 

Well AMS has the equipment I think. It is different than ours and I am not sure if they offer the service or not. If so, that is where you can go in Chicago.

In California you can contact Robert Fuller from Robispec. He is a member here on the forums.

If you don't mind the drive and AMS doesn't do it you can set up an appointment to have it done here. It would be interesting to see a car that was set up poorly with sticky tires on the dyno before and after.

Robert charges $430 for corner weighting/balancing, four wheel camber/toe alignment and I think installing a coil over suspension.

 

Just called AMS they do it there. Pretty expensive but I would think its worth it in the end.

 

Can't agree with you more David.

I went through all kinds of crap trying to get a decent alignment. I paid for no less than 4 alignments before I finally broke down and took the car where I should have in the first place, GranTurismo East here in atlanta.

My car was way off after the last "swear it will be perfect" alignment. I have a camber gauge that I would use to spot check after the alignments and ALWAYS had about 1* less negative on the front right.


I can't say enough about GrandTurismo East here in Atlanta. It's worth the drive if you are local. They actually took the time to talk with me and ask what I was looking for, how the car currently felt, what type of driving, etc, etc. After talking for a bit Jeff went to work. About 30 minutes latter he called me out to the shop. He had the car sitting at:

-1.9 -2.1
-0.9 -1.1

than asked me to get in the car. numbers poped dead on to :

-2.0 -2.0
-1.0 -1.0

One of the shops that had done the alignment had wedged the right front camber bolt under the stop, in other words they rotated a two position bolt about 90* past were it sohuld have been.

I've since purchased numerous books on suspension setup and alignment and Think I now know enough to takle it myself in the garage with a few simple tools, main reason I have not it is lack of a level surface to work from.

The way the guys at G.T.E put it me sounded best, any kid can take a fancy mahine, strap a car on it, and make the numbers on the computer screen turn green, but very few have any clue what they are actually doing or what those number mean.



Great observation on the power diff!

 

wow that is some good info....... So now where do I have to go to get a good alignment here in Wa State?

 

anyone know robi-spec phone number i think i remember he is in victorville ???

 

robi is in seattle right now, better try to hit him up.

http://robispec.com/main.html