Tell me about corner balancing....
 

I just finished installing RSR sport-I coilovers in my car. Front is lowered 3/4", rear is lowered 1/2". I now need an alignment and am deciding if I want to get the car corner balanced or not. I think I have hit the limit of my understanding and could use some help.

1. Is corner balancing a street car worth it? With a few track days per year anyway....
2. With the RSR's, you can corner balance and still maintain an even ride height, correct?
3. Could I set ride hieght and get an alignment now and corner weight later if I wanted?

For reference, I have the sport-i's, RacerX rear control arms, whiteline toe arms, front crash bolts, whiteline roll center kit, and every suspention bushing has been replaced with poly.

The thing to understand I think about corner balancing is, the stiffer you go with your suspension, the more important it becomes. As an extreme example, take a Cadillac... (non "V" model) soft, compliant suspension soaking up all the bumps. If you have one shock/spring that is 1" shorter than the other three, you probably won't even notice it. Now take a gokart...stiff chassis, practically zero suspension. If one wheel is 1" higher off the ground than the other three, it's going to teeter on two opposing wheels like a chair with a short leg.

So to answer your questions:
1) Yes, because it can bite you in everyday driving situations like just going onto an on-ramp. If the car "teeters" suddenly on those two diagonally-opposing tires from one side to the other as you enter the turn, funky things can happen and you could lose control. Proper balance will also minimize excessive tire wear by keeping the weight evenly distributed rather than riding on three tires most of the time.

2) If by ride height you mean having the same gap from the tire to the edge of the fender, no, that is not a guarantee. You may luck up and get it dead even once balanced, but the odds are slim. Fortunately though, it's usually in the order of a millimeter or two difference around the car, so it's really hard to notice.

3) Absolutely you can. Many people do just that without meaning to when they learn of corner balancing later after getting coilovers. Be aware though that adjusting the ride height of your car by corner balancing affects your alignment equally. (more CB change = more alignment change) And the alignment can affect the corner balance. It's a vicious cycle man! Ideally you would bounce back and forth between aligning and CB make gradually smaller and smaller adjustments 2 or 3 times to get it just right, but anything is a step in the right direction, even if you only do it once.

I hope that helps. Others may have more/better info, that's just what I've learned so far. I own my own scale set since you can get them used for about the cost of 2-3 corner balance/alignment sessions anyway. ;)

The RSR's adjust height independent of pre-load. I thought that meant I could get it corner balanced and keep a perfectly even ride height....

I have read that one shouldn't use the bottom mounts to adjust ride height as the damper limits bump and droop travel. According to the article one should always adjust height using the spring perch.

Corner balance is to get the cross weights (LF/RR vs RF/LR) even, so when the car corners it has even weight distribution going left or right.

Will it make a difference? Entirely depends on you as a driver. A lot of people can't tell the difference between tread pull vs bad alignment, so a corner balance may not make a difference to them.

Corner balance is set using ride height, not from preload. Your preload should be the same on each axle at the very least, if not identical all around.

-alex

Corner balancing is done by adjusting ride height based on how much pressure each tire is exerting on the ground, which you would typcially do by utilizing those ride height adjusters on the coilovers. (You could also do this by changing the pre-load settings, which may be the better method anyway...see reply below.)

After you finish corner balancing, if you do anything to try and even out the ride height, you will affect that corner balancing job and change how much each tire is "pushing" down onto the ground again. Does that make sense?

The benefit of having coilovers with ride height separate from pre-load is that you can set your preloads evenly across each axle, then corner balance the car without screwing those preload settings up. (or change your ride-height without affecting pre-load if you're more concerned with looks than corner balance)

This could be totally true, and the reason some of the higher end coilovers don't even come with separate ride-height adjusters, like KW. You just set it with the pre-load adjuster rings.

I am going to have to disagree with you there. I have read multiple times that corner weighting is done via pre-load.

Yeah like I said previously, many top level coilovers don't even utilize ride-height adjusters. You do everything with pre-load.

I don't understand this..... If the preload is constant how can moving the bottom mount up and down, lengthening or shortening the body, have an effect on suspension travel? The advantage of this type of set up is that you can lower your car without taking away any travel as you shorten the sturt body and leave the spring alone.

But on a system like KW the height and pre-load are adjusted together because you are adjusting the perch, right? So you change the pre-load by adjusting the ride height. This makes your statement contradictory I think....

This makes the most sense to me at the moment.....

Not making sense to me... I thought if you adjust height at the top perch you lose both bump and droop travel. I mean, how could you not lose travel in this manner? you are essentially shortening the spring, are you not? And by shortening the body I still see you not effecting travel, despite what a marketing flyer has to say about it..... I will concede that it not making sense to me doesn't mean it isn't true.

Edit:
Seems he is referring to bump and droop length, and not travel. My bad. The shorter your body, the shorter your full bump length. The need for this length to be correct is very apparent.