Align and Corner Balance w/ Camber Adjustment

[LucaScali]

Hi All,

Is $700 is reasonable charge for a full alignment and corner balance (930) that involves front camber adjustment including disassembly of the front strut mounts? Camber has apparently never been adjusted and the original tar or goop would need to be cleaned. The additional charge is $260. Camber is off by nearly 1 degree and they suggested corner balancing would be a poor investment unless the inconsistency is dealt with first.

The itemized total was $802.31 and a discount of $100 was proposed. This would include:

"Adjust front camber, disassemble front strut mounts"--$260
"Adjust ride height; Adjust right height involving initial setup of major setup changes" --$104 (Torsion bars have already been reindexed, however)
"Add Corner Balance to Alignment"--$150
"Additional Labor Time for Shim Style" --$99
"Stock/Street Four Wheel Alignment" --$150
"Hazardous Materials" --$19.08
"Parts" --$19.08

With a discount of $100 the total would come to just under $700. It's a clean, specialized race shop with state of the art Hunter machines and qualified, competent techs who seem to treat the cars and their owners with care and respect. They very graciously spent a lot of time with me discussing their findings and explaining their recommendations, and I get the impression they are capable of dialing it in properly.

So far I was charged a total of $115.67 to road force balance all four tires (2 needed to be spun), which all but eliminated a major steering wheel shake at 50mph+. I've tested it to about 70mph and it's quite stable with only minor vibration felt at the wheel, which I (falsely?) attribute to the sensitive nature of the steering and a poor alignment. In any case, it's definitely a major improvement, and my car was treated well--no damage to the rims and they took account of all my concerns.

Bottom line, I like the shop itself; and they have great equipment and people who are responsive and easy to deal with. Still, $700 does seem a lot for fine tuning the ride height and corner balance, and aligning the car. Does the need to deal with the camber situation justify the premium? My understanding was that corner balance/alignment was around $400-$500, if that.

Thanks in advance.

[Andy911sc]

I am pretty sure that I only paid about 400 - 500 for mine that was lowered to Euro spec, alignment and corner balance with my equivalent weight in the driver seat.

[Andy911sc]

I also needed chamber adjustment

[Flieger]

Sounds reasonable to me. It's a lot of work to iterate ride hieght, alignment, and corner balance until they are all almost perfect.

[LucaScali]

They supposedly like to get the cross weights within 6lbs. Do you guys think I should go ahead and invest the $700? The car was never corner balanced after it was lowered (approx 24.5/25) and has exhibited inconsistent handling characteristic since. Then again, I doubt it was well aligned at the time. What prompted this discussion was the steering wheel shake that came with a poorly balanced wheel/tire package. That's been largely eliminated with the road force balance and the car feels a lot more planted and consistent, but I still feel like there is a hint of unusual vibration. I definitely need an alignment at this point, but would a corner balance really make that much of a difference? I'm not sure. What surprised me in any case was that they didn't consider the required front camber adjustment to be part of the usual alignment process.

[wildcat077]

A corner balance is more critical if you're going to DE your car,it would definitely help as far as locking up your tires under threshold braking,but for street driving you don't need to spend the money.

In my opinion,if your shop did not consider camber as part of the alignment process,i would look for another more competent one !

Cheers
Phil

[LucaScali]

I appreciate your advice, Phil. They say the front camber has never been adjusted and requires disassembly and cleaning. Does that amount to an additional $200+? I don't know. I thought the typical align/corner balance was a package that included front camber. Maybe they're blowing smoke up my backside, but the claim is that the adjustment is hard to access.

As for the corner balance, there are a lot of opinions. Certain experts here say that anytime the suspension is off the car it needs to be corner balanced, others are less religious about it. Me, I'm an agnostic.

[911pcars]

Seems to me camber adjustment should normally be included in a front end alignment. Evidently, they charge extra to adjust camber. I think $260 is on the high side. What if the tar wasn't a barrier to them? Not sure how much there is, but it shouldn't take that long to carefully dislodge it with a hammer and chisel. Are they finishing this area to a show car level?

Not sure what this is: "Additional Labor Time for Shim Style" --$99

Corner balancing entails adjusting the ride height of each corner so the chassis is balanced. They have categorized "adjust ride height" and "corner balance" as separate operations when in fact they're one in the same, esp. since your torsion bars are (assumed) re-indexed and within range of minor adjustment to spec.

There's nothing against a second opinion if one is available.

MHO,
Sherwood

[wildcat077]

Luca,

There was a post a few days ago regarding a member inquiring about the tar like substance on top of his strut towers ... a lot of alignment shops WILL charge you extra to clean it up in order to get a good access to the adjustment bolts.

Sherwood does have a point about corner balancing and ride height but i've seen cars properly corner balanced where the ride height was pretty funky looking if you compared the four corners ... lol
Remember,these cars have been around and were hand built for the most part !

Clean off the factory applied tar before you go for your next alignment,it'll save you some dollars.

Cheers
Phil

[SiberianDVM]

2 weeks ago I paid a very well known Porsche race shop $500 for ride height adjustment (no indexing required), corner balancing, and 4 wheel alignment. Then I paid $150 for a dyno run.

Hell, it's only money.

[Jesse16]

Thats not unreasonable to me. Depending on what has to be done, its a tedious process to be sure. I'm almost thinking your itemized list is too low. I'm doing this myself (minus corner balance) in my garage with strings, etc. after putting on new torsion plate bushings and its a big job for a first timer for sure.

[javadog]

There isn't "one correct price" for this job. It depends on what needs to be done and how close you want the numbers. There is a range of acceptible values for each setting. Some shops won't adjust a particular setting if the numbers fall within the range. Others will adjust everything. There can be quite a difference in time between those two approaches.

Keep in mind that many of the adjustments affect other values. Let's say you get the corner weights within specifications but the corner heights fall out of spec. Then you get to do it again. Or, say the toe is correct until you change the camber, then it needs to be set again. Etc.

Then you have the tar on the front inner fenders. Some shops ignore that and go on. Others remove it, clean the area and re-apply it when they are done. I've removed it and it's not a 5 minute job to do it correctly.

Got any frozen adjusters? They'll increase the time needed to do the alignment'

Any idiots been there before and screwed something up? The ride height is way low, so that's a possiblity. Some shops assume the worst. If they don't, they often lose money. They don't like that.

Maye they get lucky and can get the job done in 3 or 4 hours. Myabe it takes them 10. I've seen both scenarios.

And, if you think you don't need to do a corner balance, think again. I've had cars that I bought new, that were never wrecked or damaged, that over time became dangerous to drive as a result of the corner weights being off. Usually, the worst problem is from the front weights being off and allowing one front brake to lock really early. In my case, I'd estimate that I lost 30% of my braking ability, it was that bad. Old tires make this problem much worse.

One thing you'll need to think about is your ride heights. They are considerable lower than what Porsche intended and this impacts how well the suspension works. It's not a popular opinion around here to raise a car back up but it will drive better if you do.

It's your car...

JR

[inthedoghouse]

The question of worth the money depends on your car's condition and how you plan to use it.

One thing I considered on mine was the age of all the suspension components - like the bushings. I figured for street driving and given how old and hard the suspension is anyway, it was not worth the money to do a proper corner balance. I plan to corner balance when I rebuild the suspension someday.

That said, I just did a basic alignment and I set ride height myself. I also installed a bump steer shim. Getting the ride height to be 25.5 front and 25 rear made the biggest difference by far. Also good tires helps considerably. I'm not sure a corner balance on a 30 year suspension will be that noticeable - esp if your ride heights are pretty low. I could be wrong but that is my guess.

My opinion in rough order of importance/impact - ride height, tires, std alignment, suspension refresh, corner balance.

[Travis Neff]

I had my 914 done, alignment only and the ride height was already set, it was a $250 bill. Its all based on time, if your car is close to spec, it should be inexpensive. More adjustments required, more cost adds to the bill. There is no way they can speculate corner balancing unless your car has hit the scales. The price of 700 may not be bad if everything was out of spec. I bet they gave you a quote on the worst case scenario.

my 911 was done all up (weights and all) at fordhals when my dad owned the car and it was over 600.

[ClickClickBoom]

Originally Posted by wildcat077

A corner balance is more critical if you're going to DE your car,it would definitely help as far as locking up your tires under threshold braking,but for street driving you don't need to spend the money.

In my opinion,if your shop did not consider camber as part of the alignment process,i would look for another more competent one !

Cheers
Phil

Not only wrong, but extremely bad advice. This has been hashed over and over, if all you do is pull out onto the driveway and polish the car no balance is needed. By your own admission, after an improperly conducted lowering job your car handles poorly and has issues. Cause meet effect. Braking, tire wear, and how the car handles is directly affected by the corner balance. My car is balanced as per the FSM on my eBay (cheap) Intercomp scales and will drive at very high speeds with 2 finger grip. And brakes from 75 mph with zero lateral pulling. It handles like it should. If there is an adjustment, it should be adjusted properly.

[wildcat077]

Extremely bad advice ???

For what it's worth, my 911 sees approx 12-15 PCA track days per Summer with BFG R1's which are an "S" compound and require lots of - camber so i do understand the need for a "good" corner balance ... the 944 on the other hand is an SP2 race car which could see 4 or 5 three day events, so a proper corner balance is even more important ... as you probably already know that Hoosier R6's are very costly and so is an ill handling car !

Yes i have a set of Longacre scales and they do suit my needs,although everybody's driving needs are different ...

There are a lot of people i know who DE their cars without a corner balance and manage to do very well,i guess they must have a certain amount of driving skills !



Cheers
Phil

[LucaScali]

Thank you all for taking the time to weigh in with excellent advice, as usual.
The consensus seems to be that $700 is not unreasonable in light of the virgin camber adjustment, and the performance value of a proper corner balance and alignment. I think I'm just going to go ahead and do it, and hopefully dial it in the right way.

To be honest, I'm extremely anxious about entrusting my car to a shop (any shop), to the point I'm almost willing to live with minor issues. I always worry they will leave me with a nice cosmetic "souvenir" (ding, scratch, interior damage),
or "find" (create?) a problem that never was, or manhandle/damage the transmission, or just plain botch the job and leave me worse off than before. What I can do myself, I do--it's satisfying, it gets done correctly, and I don't have to wrestle with the unbearable pre and post stress that comes with "reputable" shop work. It's a little crazy, I know, but I've had some unfortunate experiences with Porsche shops that have been called "reputable," even on this board.

When it comes to the wheel balancing already done, I'm not sure
even that's entirely copacetic. We agreed they'd only do the fronts at
a cost of $40 to $70, depending on whether one or both tires had to be repositioned. After 5 hours,I'm told all four wheels where Road Forced balanced, and that 2 of the 4 had to be rotated. I'd never felt even a hint of vibration through the body, so I'm not why, or even if, they rebalanced the rears,
let alone without notifying me first. At the end of the day, $115 is not a big deal, and the steering wheel shake is in fact all but eliminated, but who's to say how that was accomplished? I'm just glad it feels so much better.

So I'm going to just deal and send the car back, and hopefully they'll be no surprises. I've had sports cars in the past, including a brand new European exotic, and always felt comfortable with the people and shops responsible for servicing them--never had to worry, and no issues of any kind. I think finding the right fit for my 930 has been the most frustrating aspect of ownership. Hopefully these suspension guys will come through. They seem competent and have a very good setup, at least. I'd rather pay the $700 if it means it'll be done right.

Incidentally, can anyone speak to "Additional Labor Time for Shim Style" (thanks Sherwood)

Thanks again for all your responses so far.

[michael lang]

If you are that worried about it, why don't you set up your appt when you can go observe the alignment being completed. One, it will ease your apprehensions about the care of your car while it's there, two and most importantly, it will give you a complete unerstanding of exactly how much effort goes into a quality alignment/ride height setting/corner balancing. Anyone on this board can vouch for me on this, you will NEVER know how well your car handles until after it is properly aligned and balanced, whether it's on the street or track. $700 may seem a little high but after you watch what is involved you may think otherwise. Best of luck, please let us know what happens.

[wildcat077]

Very good point Mike !

Cheers
Phil

[javadog]

Originally Posted by LucaScali

Incidentally, can anyone speak to "Additional Labor Time for Shim Style" (thanks Sherwood).

Their individual breakdowns make no sense. I'd pay no attention to them. Either you are comfortable with the total cost as they propose it, or you should look for another shop. As I have said, you can do the same work on two different 911s and one might take twice as long as the other. That's just the way it is.

I've driven out of state to use a shop for this work that I thought was more capable than local shops at a particular point in time, so don't feel like you have to use a local guy. It's your car. You make the choices in the end.

Spend a little time pondering ride height. As I have mentioned before, yours is more in the "looks cool" range than the "drives correctly" range. That's been discussed a lot around here, so there's plenty of reading available.

JR