self alignment

Sure..... go spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a machine that be able to read the caster,camber and all that good stuff so you know where you are in terms of getting a good alignment.

Just swallow the bill and take it to the shop

stprorolla49 said:

HAHAHA yea i knew i was gonna get **** for asking this one.....but ive seen it done before with metal straightedges and ****....am i hallucinating?

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Its funny you mention that, i was about to say there is probably some "old timers" way of doing it. Getting some straight edges and at certain points on the wheels or body using it to figure out where you are at. But this would probably just barely get you into the neighborhood...if that.

stprorolla49 said:

HAHAHA yea i knew i was gonna get **** for asking this one.....but ive seen it done before with metal straightedges and ****....am i hallucinating?

Click to expand...

marking lines on the ground and using a measuring tape can get toe close enough to drive it to the alignment shop. this is not really preffered though and an alignment should be done by a trained technician.

I did it... tires wearing perfect, car goes straight, I have no real intentions of getting it aligned when i buy some new tires this spring...

Now as for how I did it...

First I set as much caster as my c/c plates would allow. then I used the bump stops for the hood as a reference and measured the distance between those and the top of my strut on both sides. Adjsut until they are the same. If they are your car should want to go straight.

Now for the camber. I set my car on the ground, loostened the camber setting and loaded the suspension a few times (boucning my weight on the car). then i let it find it's neutral (where it comes to rest on it's own after this). Then I simply kikced the top of the strut in about a half inch and tightened it down. Repeat on the other side.

Now walk about 30-50 feet away from the car and sight if the camber looks the same. make sure it does.

take the car for a short spin (1/4 mile or so).

check the tires for wear, look for pulling while driving, braking, hard to steer etc.

use chalk (or paint) and make a line across each front tire. go for a really short drive. keep stopping so you can see where the paint or chalk are wearing off of the tire.

I did this and kept the socket in the car for tweaking for a few days and i got it perfect. Now I will say that I had junk tires on the car and I did toast one of them by not being cautious enough before driving to work and back one day (84 miles round trip). but then I put on another pair of decent tires and they have been wearing perfect for almost 8k miles!

There certainly are ways to do it. The more you spend, the better the alignment. You can use a laser level and a given chunk of wood to note the level of drop off in your garage. Shim appropriately.

A couple of smooth tiles with grease between them work well as 'plates' for you to put under the front tires (keeping the suspension from binding when turning the wheels or making adjustments).

A plumb bob can be used as a vertical reference. Then use metal stock to make a a means of referencing the camber of the wheel. Try not to have a level or anything against the sidewall since the sidewall bulge (more at the bottom) can skew results. You can use little sleeves that are on slides in a piece of bar stock, and rest the sleeves against the outer lip of the wheel - nice and flat. Then use trig to not the angle.

You want as much caster as you can get - I would not bother a whole ton with that.

And for toe, you can make a deal that spans the front tires, from side to side. Put an angle bracket, etc on it so the instrument hits a part of the outside of the wheel - not the tire. Check the distance across the rear of the front tires, compared to across the front of the front tires. The difference is you toe. You can use something like cheap bar stock, with a long 90* hanger on one end, and maybe a lateral jog of metal, and then a sleeve (to hit the rim, not the tire). This obviously needs to have a slide adjustment so you can get it tight against the rims. And the other side can be fixed obviously.

This is just a horribly crude idea to show that it can be done. It can be REALLY time consuming though - just so ya know. But with some metal stock, a long metal level, a short level, a machinist's ruler (for the trig measurements), and a couple other little things, you can do alright.

Good luck.

I aligned mine myself, but with $300 in tools. I adjusted the toe, caster, and camber. The only thing I cant read is the actual angle of an individual front tire, so I had to make sure I turned each tie rod exactly the same when setting the toe in.