raywong@hkstar.

It cost 3X more than basic wheel alignment.
Will I feel the difference?

ClayJ

In a C32? I'd say yes if you've done anything to the stock suspension, no if you haven't done anything to the stock suspension.

edit: Since your sig says Bilstein PSS9 -- definately do the corner-weighting...you'll love the difference: your car will have the best handling balance it's ever had.

raywong@hkstar.

Do I need to provide any data to them? Spring rate, shock rate, alignment spec...

ClayJ

No, shouldn't have to as they will physically do the adjustments in the shop and road test to confirm the changes.
Race shops do it with every car on every different track. It's half science and half 'art'.
I assume that this is a tuning/race shop?

raywong@hkstar.

there is no race track around here, everything is done in the shop. They have lots of exprience balancing Japanese sports cars, but not M Benz.

ClayJ

If they know what they're doing, and since you have the PSS9 system on your car, if they corner-weight or corner-balance your car it will handle better than it ever has before....

Dave OH

If you're going to track/autocross the car, corner balancing is definitely worth it. As ClayJ said, the car will handle better. That being said, if all of your driving is on the street, the money is probably better spent on something else.

Zeppelin

They need to know how much you weigh and how much all your passengers weigh and exactly where they will be sitting. If all those passengers are not in the car when you drive it then it will no longer have the benefit of the corner balancing. In other words, don't bother. It is for racing only.

jywang

Corner balancing helps by making the car more predictable in both left and right hand turns. Thus, it is mostly used for autocrossing or racing at the track where you are pushing your car to the limit and any unpredictability can lead to the car spinning around.

A corner balanced car sometimes looks weird because the height in each corner does not match up. i.e. left front could be 1/2 lower than right front. This can be caused by the raising of the right front to balance the weight of the driver.

I've had one of my cars corner balanced and to tell you the truth, I didn't feel that much difference partly because it was fairly well balanced to begin with.

So, in my opinion, save your money. Unless you have a heavily modified car that has had alot of weight change, don't bother.

smgC32

How can you guys overlook this mis-information? Each corner is balanced by the opposite corner on the other end of the vehicle. It is the cross weights that become the important numbers and in a perfectly weighted car. The individual corner weights never even come close to matching, but the cross weights come close and even sometimes match exactly. Depending on the pre measured corner weights of the car, any corner could be adjusted to compensate for the driver. Furthermore, there is no perfect height and a good shop will ask you if the current height front and rear is where you want to start. You can corner balance a car at any desired pre adjusted height.

Unless you are racing your car, you are wasting your money and most will never tell the difference. I would bet that very few with coilovers have gone to the trouble of corner weighting their cars and in fact most, by installing coilovers and adjusting their ride height to where they think it should be, have made their corner weights worse than stock. But remember, even though this is true, their car may handle better by the fact that most have lowered the front more than the rear which lowers the center of gravity in the front with our heavy s/c motors.