I put this together after reading some articles online. I haven't read about an easy way to to set toe relative to the vehicle's centerline quickly, so read towards the bottom if you need an alternative to setting up a bunch of strings - an idea I thought of but haven't tried it myself yet.

Ok after looking around on the internet, I realized it's very possible to do your own alignment. Why pay $30 everytime you make a little change to your suspension? Do it yourself it's easy. Let's talk about camber and toe. Camber should be done first because it affects toe.

Camber
It's easy, all you need is a straight up and down gauge and measure the distance between it and the top and bottom of the wheel. A plumb bob (weight on a string) would work, or a carpenter's level. If the actual angle is needed, just subtract the bottom from the top measurement to find the difference. Then use trig: tan (angle) = the difference divided by the distance between your two measurements (15in for a 15in wheel). This is easy enough.

Toe
This is a little bit harder. The idea is to measure the distance between a pair of tires on the back side, roll the car forward, measure again at the same points. Either use the tread pattern, permanent marker, pins, etc. This is the easiest way to get either the front OR the rear toe where you want it. The problem is, with the rear, even with zero toe both wheels might be pointing to the right or to the left. With the front, you could set to zero toe but the steering wheel might be off. So far the only methods I've seen are to lay down strings on both sides of the car, make sure they are parallel to each other AND to the centerline of the car (by measuring the distance from the strings to the hubs). I realized that for people who have other things to do the entire Saturday, there's an easier method.

First center the steering wheel. Second, just use some long straight edge (taut string, measuring tape, pipe, etc.) and adjust toe so that the front and rear wheel touch the straight edge at all four points. This ensures the wheels on one side are pointing along the same line. Do the same for the other side. So now, even if your rear track is wider, your wheels will all have the same amount of toe in, in reference to the car's centerline. It's squared up front to back. Now adjust front toe and rear toe separately as discussed before making sure you turn the adjustments the same number of turns, keeping the toe centered relative to the car's centerline. This should be much easier than trying to set up two parallel strings.

Good luck.

 

or you can just do it this way:

http://www.c-speedracing.com/h...t.php

 

Not the most acurate thing in the world but for a street car if your just trying to get your aligment back after a suspension change then i would do it. For a race ride i dont know if i would trust it. Theirs no way your going to be as acurate as lasers and mirrors

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ohjolt2 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">For a race ride i dont know if i would trust it. Theirs no way your going to be as acurate as lasers and mirrors</TD></TR></TABLE>

Good luck with your lasers and mirrors aligning your racecar between sessions.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by G3-TEG &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">or you can just do it this way:

http://www.c-speedracing.com/h...t.php</TD></TR></TABLE>

I like your idea. Can you post how you made your camber gauge as I've been needing to buy one, but this looks pretty accurate with the digital readout.

 

Yea i guess you cant use an alignment rack at the track. but before the track its your best bet.

 

Firestone. One time fee (130$) and you get LIFETIME alignments! (for that car).

 

Yes this is very similar to what I described, but it doesn't take into account if the front or rear has different track widths. For example if the front track width is 1" wider than the rear, lining all wheels up with the string will make them all toe out. You could do this, line them all up so that they're square, then set the toe using the conventional: measure the front and back of the tires. But then you might as well just do what I originally posted.