Corner Balancing

Corner balancing is one of the best things you can do to improve the handling characteristics of your street car, track car, or race car that is equipped with a coil over suspension. In fact, the only true way to set up your coil-over suspension is to have your car corner balanced. Sure, you can get the suspension settings “close” without corner balancing, but what’s the point of having a fully-adjustable suspension if you’re just going to get it “close” or “eyeball” the settings?”

Call us today at 253-887-0500 to optimize your suspension’s performance with a corner balance!

What is Corner Balancing?

Corner balancing is adjusting the ride heights of a vehicle to equalize the load on all four tires to maximize grip and increase performance. Imagine a table with one leg that is shorter than the other three. From experience, you know that the table will wobble (and annoy you during your meal). The same thing can happen with your suspension if it’s not adjusted correctly with corner balancing.

Why Should You Get Your Car Corner Balanced?

After having a coil over suspension on his car for about a year, one of our clients decided to finally get his car corner balanced. A couple of days later, the client called to say he couldn’t believe the difference in the way the car handled after the corner balance! It made such a difference in the car’s performance that he was kicking himself for not having his car corner balanced right after he installed the suspension.

With corner balancing we can work for two different things:

1. Optimize Cornering—Equalize weight/pressure on all four tires
2. Optimize Braking—Equalize weight/pressure on each of the front tires.

In road racing, open tracking, and sport driving, we want to maximize the cornering ability of your car. We adjust the cross weights (e.g., left front to right rear) of the car to optimize the balance of the car and ensure that all four tires are exerting equal pressure/weight on the ground.

How Do We Corner Balance Your Car?

Here’s a quick outline of how we corner balance your car:

1. Put your car on a level pad (ours is a state-of-the-art Hunter four camera alignment system).
2. Place a computerized set of scales under each of your car’s tires.
3. Ballast your car with your weight (or another weight you specify). We also make note of the amount of ballast (if any) in the car.
4. Compensate the fuel load of the car.
5. Set tire pressures to operating tire pressures.
6. Adjust the ride heights to the desired height and rake (the difference between the front and rear ride heights).
7. Fine tune the ride heights to get the desired balance and weight on each corner of the car.
8. Proceed with the wheel alignment adjusting camber, caster, and toe while monitoring the corner weights. Because adjusting ride heights changes a car’s wheel alignment angles (e.g., toe and camber), we always perform corner balances and four wheel alignments simultaneously.

When Should You Get Your Car Corner Balanced?

Corner balances should be performed in the following instances:

1. After installing an adjustable suspension system
2. Once per year after the initial suspension installation for optimal performance
3. In preparation for different tracks (e.g., different set ups for different tracks)
4. After changing the weight of the car (e.g., adding/removing ballast, installing a fuel cell, losing a lot of weight).

This service is eligible for the
TC Motorsports Speed Guarantee.