After a friend had said the handling and traction of his tuned S4 was transformed by this company, and after a trip into the gravel, I gave them a go last week.
Center Gravity is owner and run by Chris Franklin, he’s the type of guy you rarely meet with such a passion for his job, Geometry and Suspension, you can see he doesn’t mind getting up in the morning.
Although he is a Porsche, club and track car specialist he works on any chassis and suspension, they provide factory and tailored chassis setups, ride height setting, damper force setting, 4 wheel alignment and corner weighting.
He started off by weighing me and my wheelchair (for a bit of a laugh) on the 4 corner balancing pads, this was in itself quite interesting, apparently I’m 78% / 22% weight bias to the rear wheels and lean slightly to the left.
The car is loaded with your weight accordingly.
As I only have KW variant 1 the emphasise was on 4 wheel laser alignment using his Beissbath Microline Kit and ride height setting.
The Beissbath is a proper bit of kit loaded with the VAG Gti data it gives measurements on everything including Camber, cross Camber, Individual Toe, Caster, K.P.I, Toe out on Turns and Setback.
Now I’ve got to be honest I didn’t know what any of that was but Chris explained each step and asked what I wanted from the car and set it accordingly, I did suffer from a case of information overload and do hope I was nodding and saying “that’s good†at the appropriate times.
As I drive via hand controls my driving technique is not the same as using the foot pedals and this was taken into consideration, my main objectives where increased cornering grip (back wheels in particular), better braking, predictable handling which would mean better lap times (hopefully).
After the adjustments we set off on a test drive along a route he uses to access the vehicle, sweeping A roads, bumpy B roads etc, I had to check I’d got in the right car I was very impressed, it’s amazing to think what just a half degree of Toe or Camber adjustment can make. The increased grip in corners give you a lot more confidence to push the car harder, I understand now when people talk about the car feeling ‘Planted’ and you notice better traction from standing starts (and I always thought ‘Toe In’ was just a kinky fetish!).
After a week I have found it noticeably harder to get my old friend TC to give me a flash, whereas before it was a constant companion.
Chris (The G Man from now on) gives print outs of all Geometry Measurements before and after even gives you a camera to use, it’s a fascinating procedure if you’re into that sort of thing, and not a 5 minute job expect at least half a day watching a man in his element, perhaps the best compliment would be the misses driving it for the first time and saying “what have you done to the car?â€Â.
Neil.
