Corner balanced the Mini today. A few photos below and the end results. Kind of a pain in the butt.

These scales are real nice for the price, but getting perfect balance to the 5lb mark is not really do’able. They register 1/4 of the real weight so making the 4oz adjustment I needed to make it perfect was not going to happen.

On the scales



One of the scales



This is how much I weigh! (not tell'n)



Results

 

that looks pretty dead on..
great job..
Anyways do you have to take off the wheel everytime you readjust the height or is there a special trick to it?

 

wow, nice job.

can you tell the difference in handling?

 

No, You just need to jack up the front so the wheel you are adjusting is just off the scale. You can then just reach in over the tire into the wheel well and the spring adjustable base plate is right there.
The rears adjustment is accessible from under and behind the car. A pain!
Keeping the front wheels straight was a chore during adjustment. Of course when you jack the car the wheels will turn a touch. One degree of turn in any direction will change the balance of the whole car. These scales are designed so you can turn the wheels so you can take the balancing even further. Full right turn outside wheel should equal full left turn outside wheel. I was lucky as it did.

I still have truckloads to learn here and by no means claim to know just what I'm doing at this point!

 

Will hopefully be tracking tomorow so i will report back then and let you know. To be honest I doubt "I" will feel much of a difference as the car wasn't that far off. Maybe a top notch racer would feel it. ...

 

whenever you jack up the car to make a change and set it down, you are supposed to roll it back and forward back onto the scales to get rid of any scrub pressure in the rubber. Best way is to make a set of platforms same height as the scales from say, 2x8's. I've corner balanced mine a few times and it is a pain.

btw, that's a cool lap at lime rock!

 

i agree that this is really important. in addition to rolling my mcs back and forth while setting my rear geometry with control arms, i ended up "bouncing" the suspension as well.

 

I did it the old fashioned way and paid the local (racing) suspension tuner to do it. I admire you guys who do it yourself

 

Thanks .... Just to note, that 911 was very tricked and the guy had a TON more experience then I ...

These scales are on ball bearing wheels so they let the car settle without having to roll it. I just jump on the tow hook and bounce a few times. That's one great thing these type of scales have over the $1000 digitals. I can do any suspension adjustment like tow and camber and all will just settle in as the scales roll and the fronts pivot.

 

As Fly and Jim said roll and bounce but also you should disconect the sway bars and put the shocks on full soft. All that said, it would be hard to get a formula car that well balanced and I don't think I've ever heard of a street car with anything close to your Left/Right weight balance with the driver or his equal in weight in the car.

 

Good points. I did both. Did forget to mention that reconecting and adjusting the drop links with the car on the scales was another tight jop.
I was also surprised that the rear came in EXACT. It was almost that perfect without even touching a thing, same with the fronts. I had to do almost nothing to get those final results. Makes me wonder how a right hand drive would be.
I figure that with all this done I will eventually have the car profesionaly done. This will at least tell me if in fact I am as good as my scales show and if anything will give me a great baseline to work with.

 

Onasled,

I know you went to LimeRock with the BMW club. They usually have a set of scales available for the day. It might have been interesting to make changes between each session and feel the differences...

 

Onasled,

Where did you find the handy calculator progam? Willing to share?

Thanks!

 

How much change happens when you switch out your wheels for the track?

I think you would have to rebalance for new wheels or tires each time

How long does the balancing last, you definitely hit some big bumps on those apex's

Cool Video, I will have to get some of mine up too !!!

 

Onasled - nice looking car, and nice scales too! Where did you buy it and how much? Does it come with the corner weight calculator too?

 

onasled, I don't know how I managed to miss this thread for a month, but I'm glad I located it tonight! Looks like you followed through on that PM from a couple months back... Nice results!

With the weight reduction measures I seem to recall you doing, i'm guessing that you are about 200 pounds That would put your MCS at 2,436 pounds...

 

my rig, me in it, 1/4 tank gas is around 2800, 165 of which is lard.

 

Scales are from this guy on eBay.
These too are also good from eBay
The calculator is here. I think it was jlm that informed me of that link.

 

HEY, hey, heeeeyyy.... come on Tony, no need to play 'guess my weight'!!
Besides, you too high on your guess, you bumm you.

 

onasled- your sig pict is very cool. race car driver.

 

ha ha, there was an ulterior motive involved, but it was to get the apporox weight of your MCS, not you. It's all the same though I suppose... There's a couple good threads on the subject, and you seem to be right in line, assuming that you are between jlm's mass and 200...

Heck, either way, it appears that with this weight, and the power you're getting (I recall a dyno or two), you have your MCS very near a 10:1 weight to bhp ratio. That's an important performance goal that I have, so I'm quite happy to see you about there, and doing well on the track.... with the right tires of course .

Let us know what you do decide to with regard to some head work as I believe you are checking to see if it is allowed or not... You also might want to check with Peter as he was at Cosworth yesterday. While the current head is said to be fat (torquey) for the street, he gave them the go ahead to start a race version. You might be interested. He had a chance to sit in a Caterham while there also! 1,200 pounds and over 240 NA bhp . I know that you also like the Lotus 7's...

Thanks for the link on the scales.