Suspension Self Alignments

[Mustang5L5]

Got this in the mail. Def not cheaply made, but seems rather simple. In hindsight, I could have made something like this. Oh well.

Chucked it on the Taurus. No clue if ground was level but wanted to see if repeatable. Mounted and dismounted and found it was within 0.1-0.3 degrees each time.

Pretty level spot in my driveway, but reading 0.2 degrees here

If anything. It's quick to setup and holds securely. I'll add it to the tool box and use it.

From wheels aren't on my car yet...so stay tuned

 

[Noobz347]

Meh,.....It's always been painfully easy w/ a string, a tape measure and two 24" framing squares.

And one additional evil assistant.

The strings are pulled taut from front to back parallel to the body to get a "forward direction" established.

The steering wheel gets centered, and the tires adjusted using the string as a reference measuring the front, and back of the tire as compared to their distance from the string.

Then,...Once a straight ahead posture is established,..One guy sits on one side w/ the edge of a framing square pressed against the tire sidewall, and the evil assistant sits on the other side doing the same thing.
A tape measurement is taken of the front leading edge of the framing square, and then compared to the measurement taken at the rear trailing edge of the framing square.

For instance... Front measurement 57.5 rear measurement 57.75. There is a difference of 1/4."

The tires are "toed in" 1/4 of an inch.

That means I'm backing the tie rods out enough to make the tires push out in front. I want to end w/ 1/8" toe in.

It takes only a couple of threads to back the front of the tires out 1/16,...because the rear of the tires are pulling in 1/16 at the same time.

The re-measurement equates to 57.562 F, 57.687 R difference being .125.

Good enough to get it going forward.

I measure how far it is from the center of the wheel center cap to a reference point at the bottom of the fender lip when the car is sitting at ride height.

Then jack the car up,..remove the tire, then jack the LCA up until the center of the spindle gets to the measurement I took while the car was sitting at ride height. Then I put a magnetic torpedo level on the rotor hat, loosen the CC plate, and shove the thing fully to the rear, and pull it out laterally until I get the level to zero bubble.

Now the tire is straight up and down at ride height.

I lock that down,...and the car is close enough to get it to a front end shop. In my case it was close enough to only need a tiny toe adjustment.

...and you talk about me showing up late. I pinged you 13 posts ago.


They also haz resources:
https://www.tenhulzenautomotive.com/alignment-101

 

[Mustang5L5]

It has a few different features that are cool. For instance. If I go to the track and want to add 2 degrees of camber, I can set it up, zero it to whatever angle the wheel is at, and then dail in the 2 degrees.

I can also remove the DRO and attach directly to hub/rotor to measure change in camber.

The caster measure setup is a bit more complex but doesn't seem too hard. From what I've read though, it seems Foxes max out around 3degrees caster, so most rake full back, dial in the camber and lock it in and then set the toe

I prob won't use this on my daily driver with $300/ea tires,but I'm excited to have this sort of control with the Mustang. Now to decide on specs

 

[Sparky714]

I did mine with the string and tape measure just to get it to the alignment shop. they told me it was a lot closer then what most shops brought in.