Alignment

[Lastminuteracin]

More questions for the collective. I have access to a full Hunter Alignment machine. Has anyone used one to set up their formula car? Seems much easier and potentially more accurate than setting up strings. Obviously initial ride height and weight balance would need to be set first. Would this work?

[Rick Kirchner]

Kind of hard to tell. You're looking for an accuracy of around 1/32 of an inch in toe. That depends on how good your alignment bars are and how repeatable your setup is. I spent about 10 minutes on their site looking for accuracy information, and couldn't find any. On their camera systems for instance, it tells you the camera resolution. Interesting but irrelevant. What matters is the pixel size at the wheel and how many pixels it requires to detect and measure.

You'll still need some kind of platform or flat spot to measure ride height (maybe an aluminum plate across the rack?)

I think the only way to find out would be to take the car to someone knowledgeable and do a really nice setup, including front and rear caster, and then take it to the hunter rack and see what it measures, maybe taking the prep shop guy that aligned it along with you.

Then the question would be which one is the more "right"!

The computerized alignment stuff is pretty unique in being able to give you a host of information we really don't get using strings and levels. IIRC they work off of angles and the formula community tends to work off of fractions of an inch across 13", so you'll have to make a conversion chart.

[Fred Michael]

Will the formula car even fit on the alignment rack?

[S Lathrop]

David Bruns came up with an alignment system for the Swift DB1.

II have used his system for years and I think is is the most accurate system that is both easy to use and inexpensive to build the components.

To do a flag system alignment, the car is up on stands, the shocks are replaced with struts. You then set camber, Caster and with the struts, ride height is set. After this stage, you replace the wheels and tires, set the car on the scales and balance the car. Adjustments are so much easier with the car on stands that I feel this system is faster that doing the alignment on the ground with the tires on the car.

One big issue in doing an accurate alignment is the variations in the tires. If you do an alignment and scale the car, then switch the tires side to side, you alignment numbers and balance will be different. To really get the alignment accurate and repeatable you need to eliminate the tires as a variable. The Bruns flag system does this.

[problemchild]

I always advise people they should acquire/build/modify their own alignment tools so that they can quickly and accurately align their race cars. Serious club racers like our team will put the car over an alignment pad several times per event. I would hope that even casual club racers would check alignment before each event. A fancy machine does not do you much good when you are chasing an issue at the track. You can probably do your own alignment (with proper tools) in less time than you would spend loading and transporting your race car to a fancy machine.

Funny story. I have a friend who was a very good driver but poor lazy mechanic. I helped him set up his car at the Runoffs one year and he was fast and lead for a while. The next year, he wanted my help again. I gave him various things to try through the year and gave him vary specific notes on how I wanted to start Runoff testing. When we started testing, the car was crap. So I started trying to tune but the alignment was not right. As I got into it, nothing was as I had instructed. I said "Buddy, I don't know what is going on. Nothing matches my instructions or our setup from last year". He looks puzzled and responds "I don't know. It should be the same. I have not touched it since last year at the Runoffs". Arrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!

[Lynn]

Will the formula car even fit on the alignment rack?

My Reynard 88f fits on a Hunter rack.

[924RACR]

I wouldn't say the Hunter would be worth the trouble dragging the car there and going through the setup (having just been through such a hellish waste of time working through a setup on a car at work)...

I much prefer a proper racecar alignment system; in fact we got a better result on the above (for numerous reasons I won't go into) with bubble gauges and strings.

Hunter racks and computers talk a great game spitting out some impressively precise numbers.

Repeatability? Not so much. Though I'd admit you're a step up if the machine actually clamps to the wheels, not the tires as they prefer to do now...

[old 59]

Went to the Toronto IndyCar race this past July. Wandering through the paddock I noticed a Ganassi mechanic aligning Dixon’s car using a string alignment setup…if it’s good enough for Dixie…

[Lee Johnson]

David Bruns came up with an alignment system for the Swift DB1.
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The Bruns flag system does this.

Does anyone have a picture(s) of "the Bruns flag system" in use. I can understand the general concept, but David had lots of unique & highly effective tweaks on so many race car things.

[Phil Creighton]

As one who uses a German hub sytem on a GT3 car that probably costs as much as many Formula cars - we always go back to the string bars bars and dunlop camber gauge as a check on its accuracy!!! Like Lathrop says keep it simple
Did try to get a FF on a Hunter machine once, owner was a Hunter rep, ride height was an issue - I know we never repeated the exercise so...........
Phil

[Hawke]

I was helping at the Melbourne F1 in pit lane a couple of years ago. The Williams F1 team was using clip on bars, string lines and rulers; exactly like most of us do.

I do find that my iPad measures camber just as well as any expensive gauge.

[Comp89]

Went to the Toronto IndyCar race this past July. Wandering through the paddock I noticed a Ganassi mechanic aligning Dixon’s car using a string alignment setup…if it’s good enough for Dixie…

And if it's good for Steve, then it good for me.

[2BWise]

Hunter racks and computers talk a great game spitting out some impressively precise numbers.

Repeatability? Not so much. Though I'd admit you're a step up if the machine actually clamps to the wheels, not the tires as they prefer to do now...

Roll a car off a Hunter, then roll it back on. Do nothing else. Just off and on. You'd think the numbers would be exactly the same, or at least within squinting distance of each other. Its infuriating.