Blatantly copied the Smart Strings setup.

Total cost ~$90 if I include the stuff I already had for doing string box alignments.





Don't judge my welds, I'm pretty noobish

 

Looks good dude. Welds are no worse than mine. Can you give any details on it?

 

I wish I had more time and less projects so I could do awesomeness like this!

 

man i need to do this. sick of paying insane money to align my lowered vehicle

 

It only cost me about $60 bucks for a string box setup. Already had a few of the things needed though. Just get a list together and buy everything, it will pay for itself the first time you use it.

 

Want!

 

Thanks guys.

I used about 6ft of 1" steel square tube, cut into 6" pieces to make the cross pieces. The long bars are 3/4" Aluminum square tube. Laterals and Verticals are 36", longitudinals are 18". About 24ft total. All of that cost about $20 (2.90/lb for any Al alloy!) at the industrial surplus yard up the road in Sanford. I freaking love that place.

Thumb screws and endcaps for the Al tube came from McMaster-Carr, I spent about $25 on that with shipping. The caps only came in packs of 100, but whatever. I thought I had ordered the screws in 10-24, but when I got them they were 10-32. I wish I had gotten the coarser thread, engagement pressure would be better. You really have to crank on them to get them to stay. Oh well.

Welded the "fingers" onto the end of the Al longitudinal bars to hook over the core support and trunk opening. Plasti-Dipped the ends so that they don't scratch things up.

The conduit I already had from my previous setup. It has sets of grooves cut into the ends at 1.5" intervals, equally spaced from the center so I can quickly set it up for pretty much any car.

A little primer and paint on the steel parts, and it's all done. Cant wait to try it out this weekend, being able to jack up the car to adjust and not have to resquare is going to be awesome.

Yeah I could have done a little cheaper, but I really have everything I need now to do it legit, and it looks nice to boot. I'll post up some pics tomorrow of my toe board and camber gauge.

Have you done the vinyl tile/axle grease slip plates? Works awesome!

 

Sorry I was referring to the guy that said he was tired of spending money at a shop. Your setup looks faster but how about breaking it down?

 

Just comes apart into a stack of tubes. Easy.

 

How much are you guys paying for alignments? I can get one around me for like 60$ lol

 

It's not about paying for alignments to me. I just prefer to do things myself. I know how to do it, I used to be great at it when I had access to a rack.

Last time I paid for an alignment, they tried to bang me for 1/2 hour per corner to adjust the camber and wouldn't warranty it since my car was lowered. 3 months later I noticed some toe wear showing up and went back, and they wouldn't do ****. Been doing my own ever since. I have my own specs anyway, I don't feel like haggling with a service writer to get **** done my way when I'm the one paying.

My toe/camber/caster tools:

 

Some in-situ pics. The best part about doing the cross pieces was that they square themselves up just by clamping all three together:

 

Considering buying all the stuff to DIY cost barely more than that, you can also set your specs to whatever you want instead of having some grumpy old man tell you it's within spec. I would say the hour it takes to do is worth it.

 

i paid $150 at a performance shop because they have an in ground rack. my car cant get on a regular rack without 250 boards

 

it looks tough ....talk about creative

 

It was real easy actually. The new setup cut my typical time of ~4hrs to right at 1.5hrs.

 

Any chance you have some in actuon shots of this spAdam? I know the car is either sold or forsale still

 

I don't see how you can make accurate adjustments while the suspension is at full droop. What's the actual process for adjustment with that setup?

 

I wish I had the time/patience/knowledge to do this.

Firestone tore my bumper off last time.

 

Measure alignment with tools, jack car up, adjust tie rods/ camber kit, etc, lower car shake and move car so suspension settles, recheck alignment again, and repeat the process until you get close to the values you need

 

Exactly. It's tedious but easy. Same way pretty much every race car gets done.

 

There are many methods though, I haven't seen this thread until now, but I have something similar. Nice thread! For turn tables I just got 4 of the 1000 lb lazy susan replacements. The sliders can be fabbed up if need be rather easily as well. This can work too for turn tables - gives you an idea of what I am talking about below.

Make your own turn plates for a front end alignment

 

I use vinyl floor tiles. A pair under each wheel with some grease between them allows me to push the car around easily, even straight sideways, with one hand.

They're 1/8" thick, so I also use them with a water level to level the floor.

 

Great method that also brings closer to level an inevitably unlevel surface. I've been using plastic grocery bags under the tires which have worked great in the past but don't take it the one step further as you have done.

 

haha nice one. my plan is to open a garage business so i can do my own alignments using a hunter or some other computer laser machine