Well here's the latest....
I think we screwed up.
It took us so long to get thgings going right yesterday that we only messed with the rear alignment.
The guy who operates the hobby shop is a real nice fellow - but he doesn't have a clue when it comes to porsches. He couldn't really grasp why I'd even want a little negative camber...
All the same, I took his word as gospel because he definately knew more than me when it comes to operating the rack.
After he looked at the adjusting bolts on the spring plates (camber and toe) he said we needed to raise the rear tires off the ground to make the adjustments.... becasue with the weight on the tires wouldn't allow for any adjustment... so he raised it up and then we proceded to dial in all of the adjustments.
After 3 1/2 hours of cursing and wishing we had the right tools (12MMM allen socket) we finally got everything aligned.
The specs with the car in the air were as follows:
Camber L- 1.4
Camber R- 1.4
Toe L- 0.00
Toe R- 0.05 (as close as we could get it)
I thought everything was fine until we lowered it back down to get it off the rack... I could really see ALLOT of negative camber and I went to look at the computer display again... our 1.4 degrees on either side jumped to 3.5 degrees!
I guess i had thought that they had somehow calibrated it for the adjustment in the air... I no longer think this is the case.
When i asked him about it, he said, "well, yeah, when you put weight on the tires, it's going to cause them to push out" .... .... Well DU'H!!!
I thought they knew what they were doing... oh well, it only cost me $22.
So now I have a car with 3.5 degrees of camber in the rear... I'm going to try and correct this today. But first, I want some more information from you do-it-yerself-aligners.
The computer only said to loosen the camber and toe bolts to make adjustments... my Bentley books said to loosen those two *plus* the two other banana arm securing bolts... Is this nessecary?
Secondly, what is the sequence of events here?
Are you supposed to remove the tire every time you make an adjustment?
They told me that wan't practical because you lose you readings every time you remove the "
"laser wheel attachment thingie".
So, were we wrong to make these adjustments while the car was up in the air?
If so, what's the way to do it?
If not, how do you make adjustments to the camber and toe bolts with the weight of the car resting on them? We couldn't budge them, that's why he said we needed to do it up in the air.
Ideas?