Suspension & Steering

Alignment Methods

> The other shop lifted the car from the suspension and allowed the
> suspension to settle on the movable pads of the alignment rack after
> the car was lowered - thus claiming that there could be nothing wrong
> with ride height. Mike also lifts the car, but when the car is
> lowered he bounces the car until he gets a stable four-corner weight
> measurement that is consistent with the pre-lifted weight of the car.
>
> Mike's method may not be consistent with the shop manuals but it has
> the virtues of a) resulting in a properly aligned 928 and b) involving
> a before and after benchmark for the ride height. Ride height
> correlates with the four-corner weight.
>
We checked David's alignment after he had it done at a certain shop in CT. We checked corner balance and the alignment and found things to be pretty far out. "Mike's method" is no guarantee that the suspension is settled. You could easily reproduce corner weights with the front suspension 1" higher than it's final resting point - guess where your toe will be when it does. Ride height correlates but it's not a one-to-one correlation!

I hope you'll be able to come to the tech session at David's house on Sat - we're redoing an alignment on a 928GT that a certain shop did, another shop found theirs to be "way out," and the driver likes neither. I use 2 lasers and a digital level (and David's beautiful garage floor) and we NEVER lift the car 'till we're done.