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Question on ride heights after corner balancing

Diego1103

New member
Location
Austin, TX
So I just took my mk7 gti into the shop to have it corner balanced after installing some bc br coilovers. I had set the ride height more or less to where I liked it and set preload to 0 all around (as recommended by the shop). I was under the impression that the ride heights would stay somewhat the same and that they'd mess primarily with preload. When I got the car back, they were able to get it to exactly 50% crossweight but they also took out some rake to bring the car more level front to back. As a result, my front wheel gaps are noticeably more than my rears and it looks a little bit goofy. I'm kind of bummed because the car while I'm not trying to go all stanced out (primary goal is track performance) I also don't want to be jacked up in the front vs rear. (3 finger gap in the front and barely 2 fingers in the rear). Has anyone else had their mk7 corner balanced? If so, do you have photos and specs? Thanks.
 

jay745

What Would Glenn Danzig Do
Location
Slightly Outside Chicago
Car(s)
Mk6 racecar, Tacoma
It's normal for the ride heights to be uneven after a corner balance. If your car is a street car and you care how it looks, then don't corner balance it. Just set the ride height you want and get an alignment. Corner balance is for track cars or people who care only about handling and not so much about looks. The assumption is function > form.
 

Chuckable

Ready to race!
What Jay745 said. The shop probably should’ve told you that the car would not have even ride height after being corner balanced, but hey, they did what you asked.

Maybe drive it for a while and see how you like it? Otherwise, just set the ride height how you want and get it realigned.


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MeltedSolid

Autocross Newbie
Location
San Francisco Bay Area
Car(s)
'15 Golf, e36 328i
Front to back height should have been able to be made closer, but side to side height will be off no matter what you do. I got my car corner balanced and was able to keep the front to back pretty similar (I was also sitting there in the car while the guy was doing it). When I get back home I'll share the exact specs it was set to (just in case, it WILL NOT be similar to what yours should be). Depending on how nice and small the shop is, they might be willing to redo it at a more even front to back height for a reduced cost if you pull the unhappy customer card. Your front to back weight distribution will be different than before, but that's not something that gets fine tuned with our cars like it might be with a BMW or something so that doesn't matter.
 

MeltedSolid

Autocross Newbie
Location
San Francisco Bay Area
Car(s)
'15 Golf, e36 328i
I took a look and here are my specs:

Weight in pounds:
LF: 922 RF: 903
LR: 604 RR: 608
This is with me (~160lbs in the driver's seat), spare wheel still in, and 2/3rds of a tank of gas.

Heights from the center of the wheel to fender are:
LF: 13" RF:12 3/4"
LR: 13 1/8" LR: 12 7/8"
This is without me in it. I measured it just now.

So it looks like my heights are actually very even all around. I bet with me sitting in the driver's seat all of the heights would be near identical.
 
Last edited:

Chuckable

Ready to race!
Yes, that’s probably pretty darn close to even with you in the car. Maybe it just looked off initially?


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jay745

What Would Glenn Danzig Do
Location
Slightly Outside Chicago
Car(s)
Mk6 racecar, Tacoma
I took a look and here are my specs:

Weight in pounds:
LF: 922 RF: 903
LR: 604 RR: 608
This is with me (~160lbs in the driver's seat), spare wheel still in, and 2/3rds of a tank of gas.

Heights from the center of the wheel to fender are:
LF: 13" RF:12 3/4"
LR: 13 1/8" LR: 12 7/8"
This is without me in it. I measured it just now.

So it looks like my heights are actually very even all around. I bet with me sitting in the driver's seat all of the heights would be near identical.

That doesn't look corner balanced to me. If the car was corner balanced your RR and LF would carry the same weight within 2-3 pounds. It sounds like whoever did yours didn't know what they were doing and balanced the left to right to be the same on each side instead of the diagonals which is really where you see the handling benefits.
 

REVerentRS

New member
Location
Rockford,IL
^ Jay745 is right. The car should be cross weight balanced. I'm not sure you are going to get it within 2-3 pounds though. The ratios RF/LR and LF/RR ratios should be equal.
 

Diego1103

New member
Location
Austin, TX
So yeah they managed to nail the 50/50 crossweight but what Im talking about is rake. Apparently the fenders on our cars give the impression of reverse rake so when the car is sitting level there’s a much larger wheel gap in the front vs. the rear. I had them bring the front back down about 1/4 inch just so I dont cringe everytime I look back at my car but for pure handling apparently as close to level as possible is ideal. Corner balancing is not affected by changing rake as long as you raise the left and right ride heights equally. For example, front left and front right. I asked the shop owner if the increased rake will affect handling and he said nothing that I’ll be able to feel unless Im doing frequent track days. So that’s solved.

Another question is .... was it even worth getting a corner balancing? I dont have adjustable end links because my bc set came with longer but non adjustable endlinks. Because of that, the left and right ride heights have to be pretty much equal to each other to keep 0 preload on the sway bars. So they corner balanced the car by adjusting preload instead of by adjusting ride height. From my understanding , raising preload will still add a little bit of ride height difference which inevitably throws off the left to right balance and loads the sway bars. So is this negligible? Was it a mistake getting the car balanced? Thats not even going into the question of ESC recalibration and whether thats also needed....


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ucfquattroguy

Go Kart Newbie
Location
Florida USA
My 2cents:
If you aren't racing/time-trialing/autocross/etc. and enough of a driver to actual extract more than 95% of the car's potential performance, don't bother. Getting your ride height equal will get you most of the way there with respect to corner weights. Corner-weighting is more like the icing on the cake. It's that last "little bit".
 

Diego1103

New member
Location
Austin, TX
I agree with that. Unless you have all of the adjustable suspension/lightweight components and are actually driving on the track often, don't bother. It sounds like you should just adjust the heights to your liking and call it a day.

OK sounds good. Since they've already done it I'm going to leave as is. I got a follow up race alignment and the car feels good. However, now my caster is 2 degrees off from front left to front right. How can this be? Not even a subframe shift will give you 2 degrees difference according to the shop. I doubt their rack is miscalibrated. Could it be a bent suspension arm?
 
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