Hey Mihnea, I want to thank you and your brother again for helping me get the alignment knocked out on Saturday at the track. It was a real pleasure meeting you and watching you guys work with such precision, expertise and attention to detail. The car feels great now! I hope I can return the favor sometime. A big thanks to Martin too for allowing us to borrow his garage bay as the rain poured at VIR...

No problem. I'm really glad it worked out!

How do you like the SmartStrings setup -- does it allow you to find the true centerline of the vehicle, or does it work similarly to the "jackstand/string" method?

I love it. It works by setting up a rectangle around the car and measuring from that. To make sure you get a rectangle and not a parallelogram, I just measure from the distance from the hubs to the strings. What I like about it is that you can get individual toe on each wheel as opposed to total toe, which is very important in the front.

hey you already know you're my hero for the mechanicals that you tackle :) but quick question on string alignment...i have no doubt it's pretty accurate (and the way they used to do it "in the old days" probably?) but in your estimation, how close is it to the modern machines/laser methods, etc? i.e. for street driving, autocross, etc, sure, i wouldn't think twice about it. but at track speeds, every little nuance can make a BIG difference especially when driving at the edge. just curious your thoughts on comparing it to the modern.

Lasers have nothing over Ion's fetish-like fiddling fixation. You can get down to +/- a very few hundreths of a millimeter over the 18" rims. I think there may be more noise in an OE suspension than that with all the rubber. Plus, they were repeatable measurements which I think is even more important to tuning than maybe even the absolute measurement.

It's perfectly sufficient. In fact, many pro teams still use the string method.

The key distinction that is worth highlighting is what Mihnea said about having the ability to determine individual toe (at each wheel, separately), rather than total toe across the entire track width. This is the key area where toe bars (rather than the jack stand method) come in handy.



Also, keep in mind that your alignment changes very dramatically throughout the length of the suspension travel. A bump in the pavement can have more of an alignment impact than the error we usually put into our static alignment in the first place.

String is just as accurate as optical tools(laser) for static alignment. Usually any deviation between the two methods is a result of setting up of the equipment and the user.

Colin is spot on on the bump(aka bumpsteer).

Edit: Sorry Collin, misspelled your name.

All of the above.

Also, it depends on the shop that you use for your alignment. In the past when I got the alignment print sheet from various shops, I noticed that they didn't even bother to get it perfect. As long as it's in the "green" area on their screen, that's fine with them. I'm sure race shops put more effort into it.

Some folks claim that the string method is more accurate than the laser rack method. That's probably not true, but like I said, if the technician doesn't try too hard on a laser rack, the alignment can be a lot worse than using strings in your garage.

Spending an entire weekend aligning the car just so, with Ion's help, and then losing that precise alignment after a couple sessions on track has gotten a little old, so I decided to throw on some RSS locking plates for my rear toe arms. These get rid of the factory eccentric bolt, which can spin, causing minute alignment changes.

Installed.

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps0jc3ac6m.jpg

$90 for two 10.9 grade blots and four pieces of metal plate. I need to start making this junk at home...