Corner Balancing

Corner Balancing Services

What is corner balance?

Corner balancing is the process of shifting the weight carried by each wheel to approach optimal values. Although some weight can be shifted between wheels by physically relocating parts of the car, the corner balance process is focused on shifting weight by adjusting the suspension spring height. Any relocation of parts should be performed before corner balancing begins.

Why corner balance?

A properly corner balanced car will handle evenly in left and right turns. Unbalanced handling occurs when front-to-rear weight distribution is not equal for left and right sides.

In a symmetric car out-of-balance is easily understood as excessive weight carried by one pair of diagonal wheels resulting in a teeter-totter affect. If the imbalance is extreme, one of the light wheels may be completely off the ground even at rest!

Street cars are rarely corner balanced and typically have no provision for adjusting spring height. That’s because their spring rate is relatively low, perhaps 100 lbs/in. With such low spring rates it would take a huge imbalance in spring height to have a significant affect on corner balance.

Performance and race cars may have spring rates of 300, 400, 500 lbs/in and higher. Corner balance becomes much more important due to the high spring rates – small changes in height greatly impact weight carried. Additionally, we are much more concerned with handling and performance with race cars so corner balance becomes very important.

Corner balance goal

The goal of corner balancing is to have the same front-to-rear weight ratio for both left and right sides. Expressed as an equation.

This equation works for real-world cars that are asymmetric. With this equation in balance, the car will handle the same through left and right turns. That is the goal.

Notice that if the car is symmetric the diagonal weights targeted by the Corner balance equation are equal! If the car is asymmetric, the targeted diagonal weights are not equal.