[Johnny Danger]

Originally Posted by thstone

Well, mostly yes (they could corner balance the car) but a little bit no (without adj end links the corner balance could be biased).

First, corner balancing is done through the adjustment of the springs so adjustable drop links are not necessarily required. Of course, this can only be done on cars with coil over suspension. Adjusting the springs will either lighten or load the weight on a particular wheel. Of course, adjusting the springs also changes the ride height (how much depends on the stiffness of the spring and how out of balance the car is).

The magic in corner balancing is getting the ride height correct (including front to rear rake) and at the same matching the diagonal weight pairs (LF/RR to RF/LR). This is a somewhat iterative process (this is why it costs several hours of shop time to perform).

Corner balancing is best done with the sways unattached to avoid any pre-load that they might impart to the suspension/springs. However, if you have stock sways, then most often the car is corner balanced with the sways attached so any preload from the sways can be taken into account/compensated by the corner balance. However, some shops will corner balance with the stock sways unattached and then re-attach and measure the affect (load) added by the sways. If its not too much, then they will leave it at that.

Adjustable drop links allow the tuner to go that one small step further and re-attach the sway bars after the corner balance making sure that the sways don't add any preload to the suspension.

So, is having non-adjustable end links a big deal? Does the difference really matter? Hard to say, because it depends on the amount of load that the stock sways add to the suspension. And even though its there, the corner balance did compensate/account for it. But its not as precise or pure as the corner balance using adjustable end links.

As for simply setting the ride height equally and leaving it at that, this is readily acceptable for a regular street car. This is done all of the time. But understand that you're not going to get the most out of the suspension. And why install an expensive coil over suspension if you're not trying to get the very best out of it?

TMan,
Thanks for the excellent and thorough explanation !