THSCC Forums

Can anyone recommend a good shop for performance-oriented alignments in Raleigh (e.g., someone who'd know how to work with adjustable camber/caster plates)? I know about Performance Chassis in Cary, but I'd like to find a place in Raleigh if possible (though I'll go to Cary if everyone agrees they're the best).

Thanks!
Bart

Just go see Mark at Performance and be done. He's certainly done us right on the Mini. Bernie's used him a bunch of times for his Vettes and Lemon/Chump cars too.

_________________
SCCA Solo Triad Award Recipient 2014
SCCA HSL National Champion 2012
SCCA DSL National Champion 2013
SCCA DSL National Champion 2014
NCR National Driver of the Year 2012
THSCC Heel of the Year 2011
Former Club Secretary
http://www.petscompanioninn.com

Ditto.... It's the only place I go for alignments and Mark has a been a big supporter of the club years. They will custom align the car based on your specks or you can just go w/ Mark's judgement, those guys have done tons of cars for the club.

_________________
Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Thanks folks! This is what we call in my field, "high inter-rater reliability..."

^ Truth.

I've tried other places over the years, mostly in search of something closer to home. Every time, I've realized that I should just stick to Performance Chassis. I couldn't even guess how many times I've taken the S2000 there over the years. Probably close to ten times, especially early when we were dialing in the setup. He's meticulous, knowledgeable, and consistent.

_________________
Karl S.
2014 Baby, 2014 House, 2013 Ford Focus ST, 2013 BMW 328i, 1994 Mercedes E320
(Insert passive aggressive signature line here)

Performance chassis over the border in Cary. Or if you have a subaru, turbotime also in cary.

_________________
hey yall,watch this...

Thanks Pete! I ended up going to Performance Chassis last week, getting the alignment, and talking to Mark a good bit. He REALLY impressed me with his knowledge--what a great resource! Unfortunately Mark didn't work on my car himself and the threads on the tops of my front strut shafts ended up getting mangled during the alignment (from prying on the camber plates apparently), so I had to have them rethreaded afterward. But the alignment specs were great.

That's disappointing to hear, those guys are better than that. I hope you talked w/ Mark and let him know. They work on camber plated cars all the time.

_________________
Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Yeah, I was surprised... I might not have noticed for a very long time, except it just happened that I needed to pull the struts again for something else a short while later. Now, because of that other work, I need yet another alignment so I figure I'll go back to them and just plead for a gentle hand around the delicate parts.

Bart, did you have them mark your camber plates so you can do autox and street settings? Did you also determine if the suspension toes in or out as negative camber is increased? I'm pretty sure if the tierods are in front of the front wheel axis, that upon adding more negative camber (more negative) that the tires toe out.

That being said, if you get the shop to set you up with say -1* camber and 0 toe in the front at your DD setting, that if you jacked up the camber at autox events (say -2.5 or -3) that you'd have a few tenths of a degree of toe out which will make turn in quicker.

Anyway, just a suggestion.

_________________
2011/2012 Autox VP
2013/2014.5 President
2013 Top Gun

2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

James, yes you were right--this car does toe out as camber goes more negative. Interestingly enough, Mark and Andrew at Performance Chassis were not enthusiastic about my plan to adjust the settings myself before and after events; they said it was highly unlikely I'd be able to get back to the precise street settings again by using plate marks alone. Mark also suggested that I probably only want about 1° more negative in the front than whatever I have in the rear (which isn't adjustable), which would suggest -2.0° in the front. He said if I went with zero toe, then -2° camber shouldn't create a significant tire wear issue if I just left it that way all the time (also the extra outer tire wear from autocrossing would help balance any inside wear from negative camber). So that's currently what I'm doing, just leaving it at -2.0° camber and zero toe all the time. Maybe if I can build (or buy!) one of those DIY camber gauges that some of you guys have made from electronic levels, I'll think about tinkering with the settings myself, but for now they've got me convinced to leave it alone.

I know that the STU STI folks that do that 'adjust at events' method, have extra screws put in their camber plates so they essentially create 'stops' whereup on the alignment shop dials in their street setting (modest camber and 0 toe). Then for events they just slide them to max camber (ie where it hits the edge of the plate and after the event, they slide it back to where it hits the stops. Pretty reproducible if you ask me but I agree that without stops, just sharpie marks or whatever might not allow you to accurately go back to your street setting, but probably not so much so that you will kill tires or anything.

_________________
2011/2012 Autox VP
2013/2014.5 President
2013 Top Gun

2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

Wow, once again I am amazed by the ingenuity of the car crowd--that's a great idea... I will probably try to drag you over to my car on Sunday so you can see if that looks feasible on mine.

Bart,

On the E46 with the GC coilovers/camber plates, I "dinged" a mark into the soft plate top with a punch right on the tip of the pointer for the street setting (-1.5°) and another one for the autox setting (-2.8°). We set the toe dead center on the factory spec for the -1.5° camber setting which gives great street driving, no following road irregularities, etc. We then looked at what the toe was when moving the camber to -2.8°, and I don't have the sheet with me, but it was just about the perfect amount of toe-out, I think 0.2° per side.

On the E46 there are factory slots in the tower, so we indexed the measurements above ensuring the strut bolts are at the outermost location in the slots.

Next we moved it back to the street setting w/o looking at the rack number until it was aligned up with the ding. It read exactly (within +/- 0.05°) -1.5° camber. Now we moved it back to the autox setting to see how repeatable it was -- this gave -2.8° on one side, and -2.7° on the other which was close enough for me. Now we moved it back to the street setting and obtained -1.48° on one side and -1.45° on the other side. In summary, being careful about the movement of the plate and lining up the marks exactly resulted in a very repeatable method to change the camber.

Note that one reason it was so repeatable on the max end of the scale is that the plates are max'd out at that point. If we wanted more negative camber, we can then slide the plate in the factory slots (which we checked btw, and that gave us -3.4°).

This was done on a Hunter Hawkeye alignment rack but not at the location you went to.

The following week after having done an autox at Zmax, I put the car on yet a different location's Hunter rack to check over the alignment again as something felt weird in the rear. It turns out the rear toe was off, so I had that adjusted properly in addition to dialing out a tad of the rear negative camber. The front camber was spot on! This was after moving the plates at Zmax to autox and back to street setting once again. Hence the repeatability of the front camber adjustment actually surprises me as I didn't expect it to be so close.

The car feels great now in street driving...nailed to a straight line, no tramlining, no following road grooves, etc. With the alignment properly set out back, I can't wait to try it at an autox again.

_________________
Current stable:
2019 BMW M2 Competition slicktop 6MT
2011 BMW M3 sedan slicktop 6MT
2007 BMW 328i wagon (slushbox for now)
1975 CanAm 125MX2

Don't do it Bart. I used to change my settings at events on the STi and M3. It's not worth it unless you drive that car everday and having trouble with tire wear. Just set it to your race setting and forget it.

_________________
Silver Honda
Green Ford
Blue/White Suzuki
Red Triumph
Grey BMW

"Never let life be shaped by fear of its end"

No, you're a towel!