Just bought the Tein type Flex for my 02 WRX wagon. They are installed and after getting over my initial giddiness urging me to take her out for a spin (and thus rubbing the crap outa the inside of the plastic inside of my fender well), I have them to where they are at a nice height and dampening. Tires are 225/50/16 on stock rims.

Questions are as follows:

What do I want to tell the alignment shop? I already know specs
What Wingless Wonder said in another post, but will I want them to do corner weighting? Is there anything that they do that I could do myself? I've got access to portable vehicle scales, I just wouldn't know what to do to the coilovers once I weighed each wheel. Part of my most recent job in the Army was preparing many vehicles for sea, rail, or air movement, so I know how to calculate center of balance, but that's about it.

Do most alignment shops offer the corner weighting as an option? What's a good price for the service? Somewhere I heard about $350.

If I can do it on my own, are there and peculiar tools I would need?

With the wheels I have on my car, what's a recommended ride height? Just high enough to where there's no rubbing? I'm not a bit interested in being low for looks, but I understand the lower the CoB, the better the car handles on the track.

I've got the EDFC so strut dampening isn't an issue, but should I mess with spring dampening?

Anyone have experience with the Tein Flex maintenance requirements and schedule?

Thanks a lot,

Pat

 

You could go to an allignment shop, but first you should get some camber bolts for the rear as the camber of the rear is probably really off. (some alignment shops will "try" to allign your car, but without stock adjustment, they can't achieve true in spec allignment.

As for corner weighting scales, using them to acheve a good balance is kind of a pain, first, you must find the baseline (weight of corners with you in the car, as well as how much gas you intend on having in the tank when you go racing.

Then you try to get the sums of the opposite corners to be as close as possible as well as the sums of the front and rear pairs to be as close as possible. eg. FR+RL = FL+RR and FR=FL and RR=RL.

Adjusting the individual heights of the corners up and down will allow you to get the load on each closer together. eg. Front left up will result in Rear right gaining more weight, and a slight load reduction in the Front right and Rear Left.

 

Oh yeah, With the tein flex's you have the ability to adjust the height without adjusting spring preload, thus keeping full strut travel, so going too low shouldn't be a major problem (well, except for the natural suspension geometry) You should be able to find the right height to keep from rubbing through experementation, or perhaps your manual has some baseline specs on how high you should set your car. I know WRXfilps had some specs for height.

As for having the scales, that's cool, too bad you couldn't bring them out one day, I really missed out on calibrating my coilovers when we had the auto-x test and tune. (well, I got some baseline info, but found the allure of racing all day to be more than the idea of wrenching on my car all day in the hot pits....)

 

Pat,

if you get the alignment done at pacific automotive, Ken's got some camber bolts in stock.....should probably ask first, though. He doesn't gouge you for em either @$35.

Will

 

Jason,

Thanks a bunch.

Does it not matter if the individual heights aren't symetrical, then?

Also, should I not even bother with the spring pre-load? Is that something to leave for the alignment shop or is it something that doesn't need adjustment?

I think that I can get those scales anytime I want them. I'll bring them out on March 9th as long as I don't have any compteting events. They're something like 70lbs each.

I'm not planning on getting the alignment until I've gotten yours or someone's competent advice after having taken it for a spin (or 2 or 3). Maybe down in the gulch????

Will,

Thanks for the advice. I'll give him a call this week.