HUB Stands to aid setup
 

I had a few spare hours yesterday and was wandering around the web and found these ...........

http://www.bbxracing.com/UserFiles/F...ail%202013.jpg

Has anyone ever used these - I've always put my car on the scales, jacked it up, removed the wheels, made suspension adjustments, dropped it down, re-weighted, wheels off, blah blah blah ......... PITA

This is such an elegant solution, can do caster and toe simply as well.

Any positive or negative feedback would be appreciated.

I've seen cars on things like this at the Detroit GP. Look like a pretty handy tool but boy are the expensive.

They are expensive, but I've been bending down and crawling under cars for more than 40 years and by back is basically f4rked, so anything that makes my life easier at this stage is going to get a serious look at, plus I can make a few bucks on the side by renting to my race buddies (I have a set of scales that only took 4 years to pay for on this basis, for instance).

RB

Seems pointless to me. Doesn't make sense to do it without the wheels on. This is almost 4 times cheaper and I bet with better numbers.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EyHW78tKK0I

Almost all the GTLM and GTD cars at the Rolex 24 this last weekend were using these (maybe some other brand though). If it's good enough for factory backed race teams, I have to imagine its good enough for any racer (as long as your pockets are deep enough).

I think it sounds awesome, and it should definitely work correctly. Arguably, it will be even better and more repeatable than doing it with wheels+tires. Putting these on my "someday" list, maybe after I get to the point where I have my own scales and some kind of leveling stand for them.

Not if you are doing corner weights AND ride heights - on my race car (running 85mm ride heights to the front sills and 115mm at the rear), it needs to come up on the (lo-rise) hoist, which means settling the suspension again before taking corner weights (again) - corner weighting session can take an hour if we've made a significant setup change which we have to do between going to Winton (short track length, lots of slow/medium speed turns) and Philip Island which is fast (only 3 medium speed turns - the rest a quick to really quick - and the Winton setup at PI is scary dangerous).

The hub-faces are exactly there the wheels are pointing and are as good a reference place to take alignment, camber and caster as the tyre (sorry, tire). arguably better.

I've spoken to a race-buddy who owns a fabrication shop and we might just make our own - I;ve got some bits to trade for his car and he's going to price-up the material (CNC time will be "at marginal cost").

It is worth it to me because getting down onto the garage creeper and up again a dozen or more times in an hour plays merry h3ll with my back.

There are many worse ways to spend $900 or $1800. To me, this tool isn't expensive at all for someone that has needs for it and knows what he's doing.

Hey RB
If you decide to go the make some route let me know
Cheers
KF

You have to be careful of those rolling off the scales though...some companies make a safety tray...

I have and use these ones on a regular basis:

Racing Alignment with Racing Accu-Lign Suspension Alignment System

Hub stands are very helpful when doing alignments and corner balancing, especially in the rear of our cars, where you can make small changes to the toe and camber arms and measure them "live" without having to tighten up everything, lift and resettle the car every single time.

Also the extra height from the stands, scales and leveling pads also get the car up high enough to slide under the car.

Things I've learned to watch out for:

-If you build or buy a set, the thicker the better. Mine are 1" thick aluminum. This became more apparent with more camber, but the stands flex a little top to bottom. so if you measure camber at the hub, it can be different as you go down the stand. Even worse is the toe. you could have a ton of toe at the hub, but if you measure at the bottom, it'll be less or none. The two roller bearings want to roll out equally (imagine lots of camber) so the toe at the bottom will try to be zero. This is why if you look at the hub stands the real race teams use, they are huge and very rigid.

-Scales don't compress perfectly evenly. So if your hub stands roll off to one side, the scales tops will "lean" a tad. Not a huge deal, but it will throw off your corner balance if you are running very high spring rates. I do my alignments on leveling pads with solid "scale replacements" (three layers of decent plywood glued together with a steel sheet on top), and then use the scales for only weighing/balancing.

Otherwise, the hub stands have been a huge help for setting up the cars. Way faster, and easier to get accurate.

So just to be clear, you're all saying if you use these to align your car, putting on different size tires and wheels will not change the numbers? Even if say you swap wheels that are a few inches apart? My winters are like 40+ mm more inward than my summers. Just seems it would change doing an alignment say on winters, then install summers.

Yep - the wheel hub face MUST mate parallel to the hub and the rim edges must similarly be parallel to the hub-face.

Change in offset is not going to change tracking (toe), nor can it change camber. Since caster is implied as a consequence of change in camber as the steering is rotated (from 20-deg in to 20-deg out), caster does not change either. What does change with offset and rim width can be the track (track is the distance between the centres of the tyre on the road).

Changing offset WILL change the scrub radius and the track width which can affect the way the car turns in ... especially if you put more track into the car with a move toward positive offset, the centre of the contact patch on the front outside tyre in a turn moves forward and changes the wheelbase on the side (by a few mm) - and the inverse is true on the other side at the front, at least for positive caster, but we are into the finer points of steering design here ... and that is another complete can of worms - or perhaps in your case, another "earnest" discussion

These hub stands are cool, and one day I'm going to add a set to garage.

I've had a couple friends that have used them with scales, and had no issues. First time setup was kind of a pain in the @ss one of the said, but they did what was advertised.