When cars are lowered from their standard ride height, the geometry (wheel alignment) settings will be altered.  Just fitting a suspension kit and not carrying out a full geometry afterwards may result in a car that feels worse to drive than before the kit was fitted.  So re-aligning the wheels is an important part of fitting a suspension kit if you want to get the best from the kit.  The geometry settings can also be tuned-in to settings which favour fast road or track use, thereby optimising your car for faster driving (which may come at the expense of tyre wear!).  Nitron recommend that every suspension kit is fitted in conjunction with a full four wheel alignment check.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The Beissbarth measurement system uses four measuring heads, each head is equipped with two CCD based cameras, one to look forward at the wheel in front (or behind it), and the other to look under the car at the camera on the wheel opposite it.  In addition, the heads also have an internal electronic pendulum which can record angular data and cross reference it to the data received by the CCDs.   The alignment heads are attached to wheel clamps that are fixed to the vehicle's wheels on the rim edge.  Before any alignment readings are taken (as in the 'before' readings), the wheels are rotated to check for run-out and the geometric centre is taken which will correspond to the hub centre.  As Nitron mainly carry out alignments on very low sports-cars, we have special clamps that are lowered and enable the cameras to look under very low front splitters or rear diffusers.

Once the readings have been taken, we can then make any adjustments live, watching the readings as they change on the computer screen (which is operated remotely from under the car).  We also have a continual read-out of the cornerweights while we do this.  If you would like to have your cornerweights adjusted at the same time, Nitron can do that too.  To understand more about cornerweighting, please click here:

Nitron will provide a full data print-out for the vehicle's geometry from before and after, which will then be recorded into our database for future reference.

The Beissbarth system is without doubt the most sophisticated and accurate alignment systems on the market and although here at Nitron we have relied on the traditional method of 'stringing' up a car, this CCD based system offers so many additional features over stringing that we can thoroughly recommend it for any serious performance car.

WHAT IS MEASURED?

Vehicle wheel alignment is in principle the direction the wheels are facing while the vehicle moves forward.  Of course there is a lot more to it than that, but that is the basic idea.  There are various terms to explain the different elements of wheel geometry, for example camber, toe, castor, KPI etc. but they are all just describing where one wheel is relative to the others and the vehicle itself.

Here is a brief explanation of the various elements of a geometry set-up:

CAMBER

This is the degree to which the top of the wheel leans in toward the car when viewed from the front.  Normally expressed as a negative value in degrees, when cars are lowered they usually gain more 'negative' camber.

CASTOR

This is an axis about which the wheel steers when turned, when viewed from the side of the car.  This axis is not vertical and usually touches the ground ahead of the tyre contact patch which helps with self centring of the steering wheels (shopping trolley wheels effect).

TOE

Toe describes the amount the wheels point in or point out when viewed from above.  Toe-in means the front of the wheels point in slightly, toe-out the reverse.  Changes to the toe settings can make a car feel stable or 'darty'.  As the wheels move up during a bump, the toe angle can change, resulting in something called 'bump-steer'.

KPI

This is the axis about which the wheels steer when viewed from the front of the car.

SCRUB

Scrub is the distance from the KPI where it touches the ground to the centre of the tyre contact patch.  As the tyre steers, the contact patch will scrub the tyre around this point.  Adding wheel spacers increases this distance by the thickness of the wheel spacer.  Scrub provides feeling through the steering wheel to the driver.

To learn more about suspension geometry and alignment please visit the Beissbarth website.