home grown alignment

October 26, 2004, 09:15:10 PM

I started my alignment today with two laser lights taped to the lowest part of each rotor pointing to the rear tires. I measured the distance between the two dots. I reversed the lights and pointed them to the front of the car on a piece of plywood. I measured the distance between the dots. you should add some distance between the front of the car and the plywood just to simulate the distance. I adjusted each tie rod end until they met up even.
i had to flip my lights around a couple or three times to keep up with my adjustments.

the shortest method i found was this.......
take a look at my pic here.
if you measure from the grease fitting on your ball joint(those without can insert something in there on a temp basis) to the outter edges of ONE rotor, you can adjust one rotor to be aligned perfectly with the center line of your car.
the next step is to take two measurements from your ref rotor to the outter edges of the second rotor and adjust the tie rod end till they equal eachother.

its kind of like remembering all that stuff you were suppose to learn in geometry class

there was perfect clearance under the car to take the measurements for the triangle below that is if you dont position your jack stands in the way. I measured from the 4 adn 8 o'clock position on each rotor for each measurement. I would prefer the 3 and 9 o'clock but the lower control arm gets in the way.

Re: home grown alignment

Reply #1 – October 27, 2004, 12:48:54 AM

Here's another method that only requires a tape measure, 2X4, a nail and someone to hold one end of the tape. When I finished my 11" disk conversion I ended up with about 3" to 4" of toe-in. Luckily I found an old issue of CarCraft which details a home alignment to get it to the alignment shop. Here are the steps:

1: Measure the legnth of the tie rod on each side and make sure they're equal. (I adjusted my tie rods out until both wheels looked straight, turning each tie rod an equal number of turns.)

2: Using a 2X4 with a nail driven through it at an angle jack up the car and scribe a line around circumference of the center of the front tires. (Or if you're lucky like I was your tires will have a water channel down the center and around the circumference of the tire and you can skip this step.)

3: Measure the distance between the lines on the front side and rear side of the tires and compare the difference. They say to shoot for 1/16th of an inch narrower on the front side than the rear.

After 6 or 7 attempts I ended up with 1/16" of toe-in, the car drove straight and didn't even pull to one side or the other. I had it aligned anyway though which was probably a waste of money because it didn't feel any different than my garage job. Oh well, piece of mind I guess... Tires are expensive!