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    Results 1 to 10 of 10
    1. #1
      Join Date
      Nov 2014
      Location
      Troy, Mi
      Posts
      59
      Country Flag: United States

      An Easy Step By Step on Setting Your Car Up for Autocross

      This is a very basic starter set-up guide. You may like some cross weight in your car if there are more right hand or left hand turns...
      copyright grservices

      Start by disconnecting your swaybars, having your steering box at the center of travel and roughly setting your ride heights to where you want them. Now you can square the rear end. We used to use a long string tied to jack stands and run it the length of the car. Then you’d bump it up against rear tire, then measure to your frame. Now I have a laser ‘string’ I can use to measure to the frame. Measure at two points along the length of the straight portion of the frame. Adjust your lower control arms until the two dimensions are equal. Move everything over to the other side as a double check. The dimension from the string should be the same dimension as the first side which tells you that your rear end is centered within the frame.

      After the rear end is square, you can now set the front end toe. Measure from the ‘string’ to the rear of the front tire and then to the front of the tire. Adjust your tie rods in or out to make these dimensions equal. One side is now done, now move back to the other side and set the toe.

      Disconect sway bars


      Using the Laser String


      After squaring the rear and the front end, you are ready to set your corner weights.

      First thing you do is check the ride heights again and adjust as necessary. Everything should be close….




      I have double adjustable coil over shocks. To adjust ride height to make the rear or front equal, measure both front, or rear shocks and adjust the nut accordingly. Make sure to mark the adjusting nut so you know how many turns you want. Each turn on my Penske shocks is 1/16”, so ¼” ride height change is 4 turns, but start out by only turning half the number you think you need because there are four springs working to hold the car up. Once you get the ride heights set, zero out your scales roll the car on and see what you have.








      When scaling the car you cannot change the right to left or front to back weights. The only weights you can change is the cross weight, or left rear to right front or vice-versa.

      As you can see on my first attempt, my LR to RF cross is 52.42% or 85# more than the RR to LF weights. Everyone’s first question is how do we fix this. You fix it by adjusting the spring adjusting nut on the shock. If you change just one adjuster, you would need about 10 or 12 turns on any one shock to fix this. Then all of your ride heights are jacked up. But, to keep ride heights the same, in my case, I need to loosen both the LR and RF spring adjusters and tighten the RR and LF spring adjusters.



      By experience, I started by loosening the LR by 3 turns and RF by 2 turns. Then I tightened the RR by 3 turns and LF by 2 turns. That brought me to about 14# difference. So, I did 1 more turn at each corner and this is where I ended up at. As you can see, the percentage is at 50%, but there is still 3 pounds difference, but you’ll never see that on the course.

      At this point double check your ride heights and you may need to adjust them a bit, but don’t let the weights get away from you. Anything within 1/8” is good…



      Now you can go onto finalizing caster and camber…

      My camber and caster started out at almost 3 degrees each. 3 degrees neg camber is good for the track, but not for the street. I want between 4 and 5 degrees pos caster and something less than 1 degree for camber and tire wear.

      Camber is a direct readout from the gauge.




      To check caster, you turn the wheel 20 degrees out, zero and level the gauge as indicated in the picture. This is the drivers side of the car.




      Turn the wheel 20 degrees towards the inside and read the caster. Here is a little under 3 degrees. The bubble is hard to see, but it is there.



      I have heim ends to adjust my caster/camber. This isn’t the easiest to adjust, but it works fine. Since I had too much camber for the street, I wanted to lengthen the heims, but to gain positive caster, I wanted to lengthen the front one a bit more.




      After two tries, I got everything to work out. I initially used 6 turns on the front heim and 4 on the rear one, but it still wasn’t quite enough caster and just a little too much camber, so I extended the front heim 2 more turns and left the rear one alone. As you can see that gave me about ½ degree camber and 4-1/2 degrees caster, which is what I was looking for.



    2. #2
      Join Date
      Nov 2014
      Location
      Troy, Mi
      Posts
      59
      Country Flag: United States
      It was brought up to me about doing weights with the driver. On a street car, I just set everything up 50/50 to make it consistent on the street. This is only a baseline and how to do it.

      Shouldn't your ride height and corner weight measurements account for the weight of the driver? Just curious.
      You can do it with, or without the driver. It is all relative in the end. When you sit in the car, it will 'dewedge' the car by about 2% for someone who weighs about 200%. Most tracks have primarily RH turns and this this the bias you'd want. We used to make changes by adding load to the swaybar, this way your preferred baseline didn't change. Some days you'd add 2 turns in the bar, and some days you'd add 4 turns depending on track conditions.

      The point being you want to be able to set it up yourself, without 200# of sand, or lead or cement because most people don't have it sitting around. Once you begin driving your car at the track, you can make adjustments from your baseline and double check it when you get home. If you like the changes, make that your baseline and if you didn't you'll know what not to do.

      You need to begin somewhere and this is a good starting point.

      Just my .02....grr

    3. #3
      Join Date
      Oct 2006
      Location
      Stillwater Oklahoma
      Posts
      183
      Nice post thanks for sharing!

    4. #4
      Join Date
      Sep 2009
      Location
      Li,Ny
      Posts
      63
      Country Flag: United States
      What brand caster camber gauge and turn plates ?I have been wanting to do a aligment myself seems like a good set of turnplates are the most expensive part?

    5. #5
      Join Date
      Nov 2014
      Location
      Troy, Mi
      Posts
      59
      Country Flag: United States
      I have a Howe Caster/Camber gauge, but any of the oval track houses have them. You can find used ones for between $50 and $75. A set of turntables are another thing. Used ones are kind of expensive. Used Steel ones are anywhere from $200 to $400, aluminum ones are more. New non-digital ones like I have are about $800 and the digital ones when new are about $1400. Turntables are hard to find used, you just have to keep on looking. I've been oval track racing since the 70's and I've collected all of the set-up stuff. I don't race anymore, but I still have the stuff..........

      grr

    6. #6
      Join Date
      Sep 2014
      Location
      Sun City West, AZ
      Posts
      672
      Country Flag: United States
      If you are competing with your car in autocrossing or road racing you should always corner weigh the car in race trim. That means with driver's weight distributed
      as close as possible to the driver seating position, fuel level and tire pressures. Before you put your car on the scales, make sure that your platform is laser level. If your platform is not laser level your center of gravity will be way off. Don't worry if one corner is higher or lower than the other corners. It will not be even on all four corners.
      --
      Kenny Mitchell
      [email protected]

    7. #7
      Join Date
      Nov 2012
      Location
      Sacramento, CA
      Posts
      1,918
      Country Flag: United States
      Good stuff !

    8. #8
      Join Date
      Nov 2014
      Location
      Troy, Mi
      Posts
      59
      Country Flag: United States
      Quote Originally Posted by nokones View Post
      If you are competing with your car in autocrossing or road racing you should always corner weigh the car in race trim. That means with driver's weight distributed
      as close as possible to the driver seating position, fuel level and tire pressures. Before you put your car on the scales, make sure that your platform is laser level. If your platform is not laser level your center of gravity will be way off. Don't worry if one corner is higher or lower than the other corners. It will not be even on all four corners.
      As I mentioned earlier, the set-ups are always relative with or without the driver. We would initially set our cars up with the driver to get a baseline. You then hop out of the car, look at the scales and now you have a baseline without the driver so you can do this by yourself. If everything is good, nothing will change day to day, as long as you keep your fuel tank full. You can always adjust cross or swaybar depending on the track.

      Just my .02.....grr

    9. #9
      Join Date
      Mar 2015
      Location
      Gulfport, MS
      Posts
      14
      Country Flag: United States
      I hope y'all see this page enough that you'll see my post. I have a question: why the 20 degrees of steering? Is that the maximum amount of steering typically seen driving an autocross course? I'm currently setting up/fabricating the front suspensions for my car and this has been a huge question I am unable to find a firm answer to. Needing only 20-25 degrees of total steering will allow me to run a much larger tire rather than the 30 degrees I planned for. Thanks!
      '66 Mustang Fastback

    10. #10
      Join Date
      Feb 2014
      Posts
      4
      Country Flag: United States

      Re: 20 deg.

      I don’t know why the 20 deg. left and right. When I was doing alignments back in the 70’s that is what was used then also for all the cars of that era.





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