ValveBounce

After doing a bit of research I took my 2009 S (owned it about 6 months, but it spent 4 of those in my garage avoiding the winter road salt) to Centre Gravity in Atherstone on Wednesday for a complete geo set up as well as check/lube the bolts.

All I can say is I'm very impressed. Chris and Pete are top blokes who know their stuff and take great pride in their service. The day starts with either Pete or Chris driving your car on a little test route they use to assess the basic handling. As they say if the suspension doesn't work well at normal road speeds it won't work at the higher speeds. It's got to do the basic stuff well. Then, they measure the current set up to see if the toe/camber etc matches what they found on the road test.

Turns out my car had never had a previous set-up, bolts never touched since it left the factory (no spanner marks on the heads), and the current set up was almost guaranteed to induce the infamous snap oversteer and spit me off the road! Also, I got lucky - my 8 year old car had 8 out of 10 bolts completely free, one needing minor freeing, and only minor discolouration where a tiny amount of water had penetrated, the last bolt (right side castor) was seized but luckily at exactly the desired setting. Bonus! All the bolts coated with AL1100 so they should be good for life and waxed on top - happy days.

Then the geo was reset for "spirited road driving" on typical UK roads, followed by another road test to verify the changes. Spot on, but then it should be. They estimate they've done 1500-2000 S2000s and they've got a good handle on what works and what doesn't.

Both Chris and Pete are very happy to show you what they are doing as they do it and talk through the principles. I'm a newbie to cars being a bike man historically and learned a huge amount about how toe/camber/castor affect the handling what settings would work for me and specifically how the suspension on the S is put together. And they only charged for hands-on time on the car. Even waiting for a bit of penetrating oil to free a tight bolt didn't appear on the bill so the final total came in under their estimate.

In short they are top blokes offering a great service. I can't recommend them highly enough.

tozerman

Agree with all the above, taken my S there on more than one occasion, even left a testimonial after my last visit.

plenty of people can adjust geometry, very few actually understand it indepth.

MrM

Chris has seen my S 3 times over the 12 years I've owned it. He rectified a bad alignment from TGM and is the only person I trust to do my geo. Could not recommend more.

tozerman

Funny you should say that, when I first took my car to Chris (2012) he couldn't believe what had been done before ref certain things like thrust angle etc. The person who did it before (6 months before I bought it end of 2011) was TGM also

Mr-T

Would you mind posting up the geo printout? Be interesting to see what they set for "Spirited" driving? Is it much away from OEM?

lovegroova

I used to see Chris about once a year. He used differing set ups to fit my driving style/experience. They don't really have a "standard" set up.

Here's what I had: You can see in particular how we messed about with the castor setting to find something I liked. The cambers increased over time, too.

My request for the first session was "give me something to help stop me crashing"

har-vey

Would you mind letting me know how much they charged? Just seen they are the other side of Nuneaton so not too far away. I will need mine doing in the near future and don't mind travelling for decent work. If you don't want to post on here could you PM me?

MrM

Best to enquire for the exact amount, I'm sure it's more expensive than other places, but the level of care is much higher, including a pre and post adjustment drive. If I recall it was somewhere between 200 and 300, but money well spent. My experience with the service at TGM was great and I only had the geo done by them for maintenance. I don't drive my car that often and so it took a while for me to realize something wasn't quite right. Chris said it was like their calibration equipment was slightly out, like it had been calibrated on a slope, enough to make the handling feel unsettled.

If I had noticed the issue in a timely fashion I would have raised it with TGM who otherwise provided a great service.

Mike RT4

My car had an invoice for corner weighting and a full geo by these guys from a couple of years ago and it was just over £500, so as a guide I would expect it to be around that figure. However, this included lifetime anti-seizing compound being applied on all the adjusters (and this works, as the car was very easy to adjust to my desired settings after fitting the DFVs and after a good couple of years of not being touched).

chrispayze

Yeh, I seem to remember that mine was £400ish,inc freeing up a couple of adjusters etc. Can't complain though, car felt superb afterwards. I've built on their settings with small tweaks done somewhere local. But the grounding in understanding I gained, and the initial setup was well worth the extra.