Newbie AX classification help

[Kim Crosser]

I don't know about the other dealers in town, but Pioneer did a real nice job of setting up max camber and zero toe-in. (I do know that neither Pioneer nor Hoehn will put ATE Blue in your car - only Porsche-approved fluids.)

I agree that if your dealer will not agree to set up for maximum camber and zero toe-in, then you need to go to a shop that will, and that knows what they are doing (e.g., Black Forest, Dieter's, Mind over Motorsports, Mirage, etc. - apologies to other SDR members who own/work/like SD performance shops that I didn't mention - these are just the ones that came to mind first!).

I liked having Pioneer do it, because at the time, my car was less than a year old and still under factory warranty and I just had it done as part of a normal maintenance visit. Note that they cheerfully did the alignment (which they called a "track alignment") and at no time did they make any comment about being out of spec, or affecting the warranty.

(My car actually had positive camber on one of the front wheels from the factory and negative on the other and as I recall, the toe-in was asymmetrical also.)

Regarding Tom Tweed's comment on lightening the car, etc. - I did say in my earlier post that I could understand corner balancing once you started removing equipment and changing weights. My post was more to reassure newbies and other weekend Q racers (like me!) that you don't need to do lots of stuff to your car to go out and be competitive in the street stock classes.

Just in case anyone missed the REAL point David made:
Even if you are a newbie, or are bringing your daily driver down on a weekend, if you don't have your alignment set up for maximum camber and minimum toe-in, you are just leaving a LOT of time out on the track. Even in the xSS classes, you aren't going to be that competitive with the random tolerances and ultra-conservative setups from the factory. For more details, see "Suspension 101 for novices" in the Technical forum.