wkasak_07Z06

Hello All,

I had my 2015 Z06 Z07 in to the local dealer for an alignment today and wanted to double check the results with you guys. I asked for a "street" alignment since I just installed new MPSS's and will not be tracking the car. I wanted to get good mileage and even wear out of the new tires as possible. I looked at DSC's specs but allowed the dealer to do what they recommended. I believe it had a "track" alignment previously. For anyone with alignment experience...please let me know if what I ended up with looks good.

Thanks in advance!

rikhek

Excellent alignment if the car is just gently driven in town to cruise-in's and car shows. Terrible if you plan on driving it.

Hard to fathom why you'd leave it to the dealer to align as they see fit. They gave you a Chevy Cruz alignment. TPC/DSC is a premiere race shop on chassis setup who has extensively tested the C7 chassis and provided the ideal street only alignment specs free of charge but you left it up to the dealer?!?!?

The most critical setting is the rear caster. What did they set it at?

Rick

P.S. I want to cry. I just saw you live in Elkridge, MD which is 15 minutes from the TPC/DSC shop in Jessup, MD. Many on this forum have driven 6 hours+ one way to Jessup to have TPC/DSC properly align their cars. Really sad...

bd377103

Did you even read what he wrote? He doesn't track the car and wants max mileage out of his tires...

Bill Dearborn

I won't be as hard on you as Rick was. Do you know if they set rear caster? If not you should talk to the Service Writer and then the mechanic who did the work. If they have the tools they may be able to check it for you. The alignment you have is about what the cars come with from the factory. A true street only alignment would have about 0.3 degrees less negative camber for good tire wear. Something in the -0.8 degree range would give you reasonable handling and fairly good tire wear. They have given you some toe in which should help on the tire wear issue with the camber you have. In the rear you have a shade of toe out on the left and a shade more of toe in on the right side. That is what gives you the slightly negative thrust angle. Both rear wheels are basically pointed a little to the left so the car is dog walking with the rear off center to the left. You may need to have the steering wheel turned slightly to the left to drive straight down the road to compensate for the slight thrust angle but it depends on how the mechanic adjusted the front toe which can compensate for that steering wheel angle.

Bill

wkasak_07Z06

My first contact was actually DSC since they are close to home and highly recommended. They quoted me $900 for an alignment. I was willing to pay in the $500 range but thought $900 for a street alignment was too steep and decided to give the local dealer a shot. If I was competition racing the car I would have probably went with them.

My plan is to monitor the tire wear and performance. If there is a problem in either of those areas then I will definitely revisit DSC. The main reason for my post was not to solicit criticism but just to make sure the dealer didn't totally screw things up. Believe me the dealer is never my first choice and I rarely go to them.

rikhek

Man, I agree 100% you'd have to be an idiot to pay $900 for an alignment.

I'm good friends with Mike Levitas/TPC and couldn't believe he'd charge ANYWHERE near that amount. I just contacted him to check and he said no way do they charge $900. Mike has no idea who would have quoted that number. Many forum members have stated on here they paid around $500 which some consider high but it's actually quite reasonable if you saw how meticulous they are getting it EXACT. They don't believe " close" is acceptable. Below is the text Mike/TPC sent me and is consistent with what other forum members stated they paid. Mike is not sure what got miscommunicated or how. FWIW, he feels terrible about it.

I truly feel sorry for you as you made the effort to contact them and now I'd be willing to bet you have an alignment that does not have the rear caster properly set and the other settings are not what I'd consider acceptable.

Mike Levitas/TPC response:

We charge $350.00 plus 1.5 labor ($125.00/hr) to set rear caster for a total of $537.50.

Pacembellum

That's a great alignment If You're Driving Miss Daisy 😜😜

wkasak_07Z06

Below is the email I received back from DSC in response to my inquiry for a "street" alignment from tchan@tpcracing.net . I understand they quoted not seeing the car first but I also inquired how much it would be if the car was not lowered/shims removed as I do not believe it has since the guy I bought the car from had all his alignments done at his local dealership and response I got was "Will be less if shims are all in place. The 900 only an estimate. Don't know until we see what was actually done." I always assume it will be the highest quoted figure because it always seems to come to that in my experience so I had to pass. With all that said I'm sure they do the best quality work, have extensive race experience, probably very busy, in high demand, and I'm not knocking their costs as a custom performance shop. Again if I was serious into competitive racing I would have done it. I went with the information provided and decided to try another option at this time. I'm disappointed with the information you recieved from Mike because if I was quoted the $537.50 I would have taken it to them!

Thanks for your inquiry. It is correct that TPC Racing only works on Porsches. We opened a new company called DSC Sport that we have been operating from the same building. DSC Sport is an electronics company that produces far superior suspension controller than OEM. By perfecting the C7 Corvette suspension controller we realize the factory geometry setup isn't up to par. Thus, we put in our racing knowledge and a lot of time/testing to create a setup that we'd track/race with. We did this setup only to support our DSC electronics product but it has caught on among the C7 community and our setup has even been adapted by Rob Fellows Corvette Racing School for their fleet of teaching cars.

Anyway, if your car has some sort of track setup and would like to convert back to high performance street I estimate the cost to be around 900 dollars. I am estimating that the shims are missing based on your description, people remove the shims for track, they are a pain to get to.

Regards,
Tom

wkasak_07Z06

For the most part that is not far from the truth. I just bought the car and put on new tires so that and the expense of the car, inspection, tax/tags, are all still fresh and I want to add longevity to the tire wear (for now). I will mainly be doing weekend driving/trips and some "spirited" street/back road driving. If I decide to do a track day in the future I will have the alignment adjusted accordingly prior to the event.

Mr. Gizmo

Pacembellum

Thats basically an economy car alignment mr gizmo. Not good for performance driving.

Mr. Gizmo

dparm

That's not even within the factory alignment specs (which aren't all that aggressive to begin with). I would go back and have them redo it.

a/d/s

I agree that the most critical alignment component in the C7 (any Stingray, GS, Z06 and now the ZR1) is the rear caster.

It is very easy to spot a car with evil rear caster. When the rear wheel center is closer to the front of the car (cabin) it is positive caster, rear wheel towards the rear bumper, negative caster, about centered in the wheel well 0 caster.

I purchased the expensive caster tool and bring it with me to alignment shops to reset my car. The few C7 I have driven with evil handling (can't put power down) have had rear caster out of shape (one side positive, one side negative), and no normal alignment shop can read the rear caster without the special tools.