Who has tried aligning your car yourself???

[Milehighxr]

I have some nice stuff, and even an old dude that can help me use it:

It is Bear Projectoe, and I have some nice rim clamps, as well as one Bear, and one Snap On caster camber gauge. I have 4 turnplates, and even a full set of stands. I have to modify one set of stands so I can run all 4 turn plates at once with the car on the stands. I also have a scribe line toe bar setup for doing quick and dirty toe adjustments.

 

[abstamaria]

I have done my own alignment work, including bump steer. I use principally Longacre and Smartcamber. I had a "perfectly flat" floor laid when the garage was redone the other year, but I don't think that was too successful.

Andy

 

[rsa]

I haven't, but when I renewed the suspension of my 200K mile Miata, I put the new alignment bolts to center positions for the drive to the alignment shop. It drove so well, I turned around before I got there. One of these days I'll have to get her on a rack to get the numbers.

 

[smalltruck]

I do semi alignments with a hunter machine. Hunter claims that the accuracy is tighter than .003 of an inch and that number is repeatable.

What that really means is how well does the tech know what is going on. I'm teaching a new guy alignment on trucks who came from a car alignment shop. Found out I'm way too fussy on the difference between in the green and done right. He's finding out that in the green does not cut it.

Side note here- Mazda's specs are so wide that almost all of them in are in spec at most place like tires plus, goodyear and others where if the machine has it in the green its good enough.

The target machine that hunter sells most places is okay for high volume low accuracy work. It will never get used on my cars. Not saying its bad just not on mine. I think thats the only machine that tires plus and NTB use...

 

[williaty]

Basically every manufacturer's specs are way too wide. Subaru's toe specs are something like 0.1* toe out to .25* toe in. Clearly stupid.

 

[RobSmith]

Bought a system from Summit...Fasttrax I think. Damn good stuff. Simple and easy to use.
I put down a laminate of smooth side masonite board and plastic sheet and the wheels pivot like they were on ice. I can do an alignment in 1/2 an hour complete but it takes a bit longer lately due to the trips to the beer fridge and the consequential drinking of the beverage.

 

[Milehighxr]

The manufacturers specs are "shotgun" wide so they can get the cars off the factory floor. The specs for the camber on my Merkurs is something like -1.5 degrees to + 1.5 degrees. Way too much for anything driven on the street, and more than even some the racers in the 80s weren't running that much.

 

[SGKent]

Many of the cars today are really just toe alignments. I did our 77 VW bus when I rebuilt the front and rear suspension but the garage isn't perfectly level so I took it to an old time shop when done for verification. My numbers were within specs even with the uneven garage floor but we tweaked it to perfect with the old alignment equipment and my bubble protractor. I use a track gauge or tape measure to check toe and a string or chalk and plumbline for square. Usually my numbers are better than most shops. A lot of the modern mechanics really don't understand the process. They lean on the fender and if it is in the green they are happy.

 

[williaty]

The manufacturers specs are "shotgun" wide so they can get the cars off the factory floor. The specs for the camber on my Merkurs is something like -1.5 degrees to + 1.5 degrees. Way too much for anything driven on the street, and more than even some the racers in the 80s weren't running that much.

I'm running -2.25* of front camber on my daily driver (Subaru Impreza) and have run up to -4 on the street before. Wither or not any amount of camber is enough/too much for a street car is going to depend on the overall suspension design.

 

[BWS]

A deep subject......not so much on the numbers.Thats gonna take testing to see what works best on....That car....that driver....that track.


The decisions in my pea brain are how far are you willing to go on the equip side?With patience,care...and VG measuring ability's you can get downright Fred Flinstone and do an acceptable job.But it takes time......so depending on how deep your pockets are,and what fabricating skills/equip you got can really speed things up....the accuracy however is still more dependant on talent than equip.


But posted to say you might try asking around for a "frame shop" in your area thats involved with racing.Finding a shop that's straightening,tweaking local RR'ers will have....usually a little better understanding of what you're trying to accomplish than the typical tyre joint.BW

 

[Milehighxr]

I'm running -2.25* of front camber on my daily driver (Subaru Impreza) and have run up to -4 on the street before. Wither or not any amount of camber is enough/too much for a street car is going to depend on the overall suspension design.

In my limited experience if you good tire wear on a street car the numbers should be as close to 0 as possible. If you have a high profile vehicle some negative is a good thing, for stability, but still too much will adversely affect tire wear.

 

[williaty]

In my limited experience if you good tire wear on a street car the numbers should be as close to 0 as possible. If you have a high profile vehicle some negative is a good thing, for stability, but still too much will adversely affect tire wear.

It's toe that destroys tires. With 0 toe, you can run a crapton of camber and not have any adverse wear. What a lot of camber does do is to make the tires very sensitive to toe, so you start getting tire wear with less and less toe as the camber increases. Running -2.5, I get no adverse wear so long as I keep the toe +/- 0.01* of 0. Obviously, there's only any point to running that much toe if your particular suspension requires it for handling. Mine does (MacPherson strut design).

 

[Milehighxr]

I don't have my handy dandy cheat sheet on me, can you put yer toe fiures in inches too. I have no clue what .01 degrees of toe is, other than it is damn close to 0. All my gear is set up to read in inches for the toe settings.

 

[williaty]

You actually should be measuring your toe in degrees, not inches. The reason for this is that if you measure it in inches, the baseline width of the measurement becomes a critical part of figuring out if you have the right toe or not. In other words, how far apart you're making the two measurements determines wither 1/8" of toe is a little or a lot. If you have 26" diameter tires and you're measuring on either side of them, 1/8" of toe is a LOT. If you have 70" diameter mudder tires on there, 1/8" of toe is not so much. However, a degree is always a degree, no matter how far apart you're measuring them.

To give you a point of reference, that 0.01* I align within is equivalent to a little less than 1/32nd on standard 24" diameter small passenger car tires.

 

[Milehighxr]

I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter with my gear. I always set it up the same way, and always do wheel runout compensation first. Look at the pics I posted, my gear isn't too shabby for being as old, if not older than I am. Besides, the specs for my cars are listed in inches(actually mm, but inches in parenthesis), so it's easier for me to think in inches. It's also how the old man taught me how to do the alignment stuff.

For comparisons sake, I seem to recall setting my car up for about 1/16" total toe in. I have nice tire wear even with the heinous negative camber I have. For now...