You've been to a season or two of autocrosses or track days, and decide it's time to get serious. You buy every-which-way adjustable suspension. If it aims the wheels, you can adjust it. You are the king.
But there's a voice in the back of your head that keeps asking whether you're really dialed in. Do you know how your car reacts to every adjustment? Why did you pay all that money if you're not going to use it? And that voice's little friend is even worse: "Don't mess with it, stupid, you'll just screw it up. If you start playing with the adjustments, how do you know you'll make it better? If it's worse, how will you get it back where it was? Just leave it alone. Don't worry about it. Get in and drive."
To shut up those voices, you're going to have to experiment, which means changing things. You can pay someone else to do that. Here in Southern California, there are a handful of shops with excellent reputations among racers and track enthusiasts. But they aren't open at 11:00 p.m., which could be the only time you have available to prep your car before a track day. They're also at least an hour from any track, making it impossible to use them for test and tune sessions. If you live somewhere else, your situation probably isn't any better.
Taking matters into your own hands means measuring your car. Only by doing so can you set camber and caster to actual values, talk about it meaningfully and compare setups with other cars.
The Smart Racing Products SmartCamber camber/caster gauge enables you to measure these settings quickly and precisely, nearly anywhere. It doesn't need a surface plate: The SmartCamber tool can compensate for uneven or sloped garage floors and pit surfaces, whether you prefer to adjust the measurement or the floor itself. You could even use the SmartCamber on reasonably smooth dirt.
SmartCamber is available in three sizes that will cover from 5- to 22-in. wheels. The basic unit is flat; the triangular base is the hands-free adapter, which enables SmartCamber to hold itself to many wheels while adjustments are made. It requires a bit of a lip to grab, so if your wheels are rounded at the rim, consult with Smart Racing Products to determine whether the hands-free adapter will work.
SmartCamber's brain is an easy-to-use digital inclinometer. It reads to 1/10 degree and is removable from the frame (as well as being available by itself), giving it a million possible uses besides wheel alignment. Like any sophisticated tool, the results achieved depend mostly on the care and understanding with which SmartCamber is used. The instructions are excellent, however, and should guide any reasonably patient person to accurate measurements. They provide cautions against possible sources of error such as a bent wheel, and how to account for them. The latest revision of the instruction sheet in PDF format can be downloaded at www.smartracingproducts.com.
The instructions aren't a manual in chassis setup, and won't tell you where to point your wheels. You still must test the car. SmartCamber isn't a map to get you out of the woods; it's only a compass, a tool to tell you where you are going. It also can't measure toe, the third ingredient in wheel alignment, but Smart Racing Products has released SmartStrings, a slick toe-measuring setup, in the time since european car got its SmartCamber. We're going to play with one soon. We'll let you know how it goes--we've downloaded the instructions and expect good things.
