- I am making a long trip, so I cannot wait and decided to do the REAR Alignment myself. After a few tries we had both gauges reading within 0.1 degrees of each other. Multiply whatever it says on the gauge by 2 to get the caster angle. - Called local BMW dealer, they wanted $150! The Tenhulzen gauge shortcuts this a bit with some 20-degree angles built into the sides of the gauge. Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next > appletree. We are giving this CRX a fresh new alignment to prepare it for another season of rough and tumble racing. Low-cost tricks for a DIY alignment. If you have some sort of prior experience with alignment tools, you would probably be able to tell if something looked odd or if you were doing something to accidentally throw your measurements off. That's it. If you want something preset and a little easier to use then check out the new QuickTrick system in the shop. While the most popular and common method by Ray Scruggs use strings, I decided to go stringless. This particular CRX has had a colorful history of racing-related abuse, including being thrashed to a class victory in its first ever race before being rolled onto its roof on the very next day. Tilting it side to side can affect the camber readings. QuickTrick™ Alignment 2019 4th Gen Series offers lighter weight aluminum Systems for Home, Pro, and DIY wheel Alignment. How-to: Jeep 4×4 Front Wheel Alignment. Wheel alignment is a basic Jeep or 4×4 truck maintenance need. Then we pulled the strings out and hooked them onto the frame so they sat slightly higher than the centers of the wheels. Fast Shipping! Camber measurements are easy with this inexpensive, yet highly accurate, caster/camber gauge from Maximum Motorsports, available for about $60. Toe adjustments on individual wheels showed up exactly the same way on the Tenhulzen rack as it did on my other toe gauges as well. The procedure is straightforward but requires some care. You’ll still want to get a computerized alignment if this happens, but get to a shop — and avoid personal injury and vehicle damage — by using these DIY alignment tips. First, we adjusted the width of the rack so that the inner rivets on the horizontal sections were slightly wider than the car, and made sure that both front and rear frames were the exact same width. * Develop a settling routine to use after each weight adjustment, either by rolling the car back and forth onto the scales or jouncing the suspension. While doing that I completely removed the subframe and replaced all the stuff in the front suspension. Tie Rods. If you don't need this advanced data, you can still use the information here about how to level the scales before moving on to the basic at-home alignment procedure in the following pages. Refine your settling procedure until your results are repeatable before making any changes. Scaling Tips* Always measure cross-weights with the car in race-ready condition with all fluids full and driver weight accounted for. Even if you're not racing, having all your car's wheels pointed in the right directions is a good idea, and you might be surprised at how much better your car drives after being aligned, not to mention the fact that your tires will probably last longer once you learn how to do your own alignments. This is definitely true if you intend to drive at Pocono Raceway. On most alloy wheels they will have less than 1/32″ which is just fine. I tried doing the wheel alignment myself. Wheel Alignment Guide - DIY Car Alignment With A Few Basic Tools And The Know-How Shared Here, You'll Never Again Be At The Mercy Of An Alignment Shop. The new ball joints on the steering rack was a bit different than the ones that was on, so the measurements where a bit wrong. * Disconnect front and rear sway bars to eliminate the effect of sway-bar bind. Very accurate toe measurements can be achieved by the string method, which involves stretching a perfectly squared rectangle of string around it to create a known point from which to measure. Nonetheless, through practice and patience we persevered to get the CRX to -2.65 degrees Front and -3.5 degrees Rear that we wanted out of the car. If the track is wider at the front, the wheels are toed-out; if the track is narrower at the front, the wheels are toed in. DIY Jeep 4×4 Front Wheel Alignment. See Also. !& Smooth Transaction!! With the Tenhulzen system (as with most string-based alignment systems), this is achieved by moving the front and rear frames so that the distance between the center of the hub and the string is the same across the left and right sides of the car. The simple-to-build rig consists of two lengths of 3/4-inch electrical conduit cut about 6 inches wider than the track width of the car, with holes drilled for the string to pass through on each end. Note that the front and rear measurements may be different due to variations in track width, but the conduit ensures that the strings always remain parallel to each other. Do-it-yourself wheel alignment guide. Now you need to set up 1 jack stand at the back of your car, on the side behind the rear wheel and the other jack stand in front of the front wheel and off to the side. Alignment shops have very specialized and expensive tools to get the job done correctly. Refer to the previous section about scaling and cross-weighting to learn how to level all your wheel pads before you begin your alignment. I don't know of any other system that comes close to delivering this level of functionality for $500. Our testbed is a '90 Honda CRX Si prepared for endurance racing by the team at ProjectCRX.com. Then stick the gauge on the wheel and read the number that shows up. The torque specification for alignment bolts appears to be as much as humanly possible ft-lbs. The conduit is supported at each end of the car by a set of adjustable jackstands (we use screwdrivers to keep the conduit from rolling off, as seen in the photos) and a length of 60-pound-test fishing line is strung along each side of the car at the same height as the hubs. It turns out the reason for this is that the slits that make the gauge adjustable are cut slightly too wide, which lets the short arm shift so that it isn't quite perpendicular to the long arm. The next step was front wheel alignment. Camber adjustment is very straightforward with the Tenhulzen gauge. Getting this right without doing dozens of test drives ultimately ended up saving a lot of time and frustration. The intricate details that were put into both the frame and the handheld camber/caster/toe gauge take away many of the annoyances of doing alignments. Our testbed is a '90 Honda CRX Si prepared for endurance racing by the team at ProjectCRX.com. I usually have to do a bit of trigonometry to get the actual degree measurement, so this is a real time-saver for me. That’s a valid assumption, as DIY car alignment is considered an oxymoron. In order to get an accurate toe measurement on the car, the strings need to be perfectly parallel to the true centerline of the car. If you see that the tread on any one tire appears lower on one side of the car, or lower on one side of a tire than the other side, you have an alignment issue . The first step to performing DIY wheel alignment is to know when your car needs one. (Small differences are the result of rounding.). Even if you just want to set it and forget it. Words like "caster," "camber," and "toe" are enough to deter anyone from delving any further into the topic. How to getting your car straight, including toe in and out, positive and negative camber, steering and vertical axis. * Shoot for zero toe-in and no more than 0.015-0.020 inch of toe-out on bump, especially in the first inch of travel. How to Fix the Alignment on a Car (with Pictures) - wikiHow DIY: 1998 528i REAR Wheel Alignment I just did the REAR Suspension Overhaul, and needed to do a 4-wheel alignment. Traditionally, measuring caster involves a somewhat complex procedure that involves turning plates and a camber gauge. Place the magnetic angle finder on the ground to zero it, then place it on the little L-bracket on the gauge. Just read the metric side and remember that 1mm = 0.1 degrees. If you move the rack side to side so that the two distances marked "A" are exactly the same and the two distances marked "B" are exactly the same, the strings will be perfectly parallel against the true centerline of the car. When the vehicle starts pulling to one side – or after a sharp impact with a curb – most drivers suspect that the wheels might be out of alignment. Why?? The result forces the driver to make additional steering inputs to keep the car turning in the desired direction, especially in tight corners as the car's suspension rolls while cornering. These diagrams show the before-and after results of corner-weighting our Mustang. A single "sandwich" goes under one tire. Mercedes DIY Wheel Alignment . Our road-race Mustang is set up with about 3 3/4 degrees of negative camber per side. Here's a diagram that helps illustrate what needs to be done: The funny looking box in the center is the car, the black rectangles are the wheels and the blue lines are the strings. The cause of this discrepancy turned out to be a combination of the gauge sliding about and our inability to get the fingers to grasp the wheel rim consistently. A wheel alignment can seem like black magic. Suspension modifications, normal chassis and steering linkage wear, off-pavement trail pounding and the use of oversized tires can each impact the front wheel alignment. Find 2 places on your wheel that are 180 degrees apart and have the same run out measurement. Hey all, im just looking for some knowledge and perhaps instructions on how to correct camber on the front wheels on my car, 1941 dodge kingsway. Most 4-wheeler owners’ manuals will come with alignment information in the back of the book. The track width is the width of your car between the wheel hubs. Reconnect Sway Bars. But once we got it, measuring the toe was a very straightforward process. If Tenhulzen were to re-engineer this kit using thick aluminum or steel plate like my Longacre alignment tools, I would probably revise this recommendation to include absolute beginners. Notice that the left, rear, and total weights did not change. Hands-On - Tenhulzen 4-Wheel Alignment System Testing a clever DIY 4-wheel alignment system Posted by Roger on March 26, 2016 Now that we are done assembling and fiddling with the Tenhulzen 4-Wheel Alignment System, it's time to put it to good use. The first time, the alignment is perfect. However, if you’re repairing steering and suspension parts, you may throw off your wheel alignment. Now that we are done assembling and fiddling with the Tenhulzen 4-Wheel Alignment System, it's time to put it to good use. The use of fingers to attach the gauge to the wheel is simply, a stroke of genius. Car was running straight, nice print out of specs, no problems. * Always work from a level surface to avoid introducing error into your measurements. Turn the digital gauge on and hold the zero button down until it reads 0.00. Only physically moving or adding weight can change the distribution within the car. If the front ruler shows a larger measurement than the rear, the wheel has toe-in. To use it, steer the wheels straight ahead (which is easy to get perfect if you have strung the car), then hold the gauge firmly against each wheel and turn the knob until the bubble level is centered. Unfortunately, I can also see a lot of people accidentally bending the gauge as they take their measurements, inadvertently throwing their measurements way off. Cross-Caster: A side-to-side difference in caster settings. Practice makes perfect, as they say. Many oval-track racers run even higher amounts of cross-caster on the outside wheel to help the car turn down to a lefthand corner. Tips on Setting Alignment* The effects of the various alignment settings interact, so adjust caster and camber first. - My trusted local indy wanted $90 but the next appointment is 10 days from now! Rob Siegel. Of course, all of this would be meaningless if the gauge wasn't accurate, so we took the time to check each measurement against my tried and true Joe's Racing bubble camber gauge and Longacre Quickset Toe gauge. At the same time the flimsy aluminum construction of the gauge and rack led to a litany of do-overs before we had accurate measurements on all four wheels. All we needed to do was to fold out the rulers on the sides of the gauge and get the difference between the measurements. A tire's traction is always greatest when the largest part of its contact patch is in contact with the road surface, and static camber can be dialed in to keep the tire perpendicular as the chassis rolls in a turn. For example, tilting the front or rear of the car up or down can affect caster measurements. Though the actual measurement process was decidedly easier using the Tenhulzen gauge due to its fingers and re-zeroable digital angle finder. Getting the toe right took quite a bit of time, as I kept having to reposition the frames every time I raised and lowered the car. 10 February 2020. Toe-in is used on most drag and production cars to compensate for slack in the steering components so the front wheels track straight ahead under forward thrust. * If you run out of adjustment range, you may have to make compromises on caster and camber to get the specs equal side-to-side. One neat feature of the gauge is that if you adjust the two rulers so that they sit all the way on the outside of the gauge, you can measure the toe in degrees. After months of chipping away at it a little each night, I had the front end in my 1974 Lotus Europa Twin-Cam Special buttoned up. Posted Cross-Camber: A side-to-side difference in camber settings. During our alignment session, we found a wealth of time-saving features cleverly engineered into the system. Tie rod replacement usually requires only a tape measure: Verify your procedure by weighing the car, jacking up one corner, and rechecking the corner-weights after settling. A really good DIY check can be found here: DIY QUAD ALIGNMENT There are also quite a few on YouTube. Now, there are a few ways to look at this. A turntable is a "sandwich" made of two plates with a layer of grease between them. Wheel alignment on the go with 14 … Martin also found that he could bend the gauge with relative ease and force the fingers into the tyre to throw the readings off even further. If the two arms of the camber gauge aren't perpendicular to each other, the fingers can't grasp the wheel properly and the gauge reads incorrectly. The most difficult and time-consuming part of the process is setting up your equipment to get accurate, repeatable results. Aligning a car may seem like one of those voodoo sciences that makes no sense if you've never actually seen it done, but as we learned by doing in preparing this article, the process is really quite straightforward if approached logically. As surprising as it is, the thickness tolerance on a 2×4 is very good, this specific plank measured to within 0.003 inches. Discussion in 'Car Repairs / Maintenance' started by appletree, 8 Apr 2010. The tricky part was finding 12 flat washers that stacked up to be the same thickness. For cruisers where an alignment is a set-it-and-forget-it proposition, that's probably OK. - Robertm5zw3 Highly recommend. Factors affecting wheel alignment In theory, all four wheels should be perpendicular to the ground and parallel to each other. The TR6 is a 4 wheel alignment whereas my 67 Mustang is basically a front end alignment, but can be performed and recorded as a 4 wheel. The rim-grasping fingers, while brilliant, also take some getting used to with certain wheel-tyre combinations. Excellent product for DIY alignment. But because we could measure the toe of each wheel individually, we could adjust all four wheels at once and skip a lot of the guessing and checking. A+ - leedon314 Fantastic seller – Great experience and post-sales support is wonderful. Toe must be set last. Record the measurements to speed up the process the next time. Making a 1/2-inch ride height adjustment to the left rear resulted in a 1.1 percent increase in cross-weight to 49.2 percent, which represents 0.8 percent of reverse wedge. by Roger If you know toe is split evenly across each axle beforehand, then using toe plates as described above is an excellent way to measure and track changes. Caster: The deviation in degrees between an imaginary line running through the upper and lower ball joints and a vertical line running though the center of the wheel hub to the center of the tire's contact patch on the ground. Adjust jack to position a-arms to current ride height, Center the steering rack and start measuring to either toe in or out. * Some toe-out on the inside tire in rebound can help corner entry by creating an Ackerman-like effect as the car turns in. This page introduces you to the tools and basic terms you'll need to know. Due to the nature of how suspension systems work in production cars, there is a standard order of operations for aligning race cars: The ride height and corner weights had already been set, so we skipped right to the caster and camber. All in all, the Tenhulzen 4-wheel alignment system requires quite a bit more finesse than your usual set of toe plates or bubble-level camber gauge. This worked great on my RZR’s using shelving brackets. It will take several minutes of walking around the car making smaller and smaller adjustments until you get the string square. A+ seller and unit. Finally, we set up the strings and rack so that we could get an accurate 4-wheel toe measurement on the car. All you do is attach the gauge to the wheel and turn the steering wheel until the angled cut is parallel to the bodywork of the car. on March 26, 2016. Bumpsteer Tips* Always set toe and caster prior to bumpsteering a car because caster affects the height of the steering arms, which in turn affects the bumpsteer measurements. Cardboard turntables can be … For more information on balancing the car's weight per wheel, see Marlan Davis' story "The Science of Scaling Your Car" in the Sept. '03 issue, or on the This Month page of HOTROD.com right now. - yonmoor Excellent engineered camber/caster instrument, easy to use. Knowing your car's weight is handy, but knowing how that weight is balanced is critical for a race car and can be measured easily with the Longacre Accuset scale system, which costs about $1,100. If the imaginary line tilts to the back of the vehicle as viewed from the side, caster is positive; if it tilts forward, caster is negative. DIY Wheel Alignment It’s Easier Than You Think! Although primarily known as late-model Mustang suspension specialists, Maximum Motorsports also sells several inexpensive alignment tools, including the caster/camber and bumpsteer gauges we used. Then came the most tedious part - squaring the strings. Although this probably has to do something with the fact that Martin weighs 200 lbs and is mostly made of muscle, there is something to be said about the relative flimsiness of the gauge compared to some of the other camber gauges I've used in the past. More importantly, the ability to measure against the true centerline of the car meant that, once we were done, the thrust angle of the car would be 0 and the steering wheel would point dead straight. Share. A range of wheel alignment tools for DIY and Professional use. Adjust sway bar end links for the new distances to mounting points and reconnect. If the top of the tire tilts inward as seen from the front, camber is negative; if it tilts outward, camber is positive. Whether you are doing a 2- or 4-wheel alignment, you have two choices for making an affordable set of turntables. You can also determine this by feeling for irregularities in … Last year I overhauled an 5hp19fla automatic transmission and replaced. DIY or QuickTrick Alignment . This will also help identify bent chassis parts in the future. If the corner-weights vary, there is still some bind in the suspension. Each mark on the knob represents 1/8 degree of camber (clockwise for positive camber, counterclockwise for negative). There are dozens of DIY alignment hacks online but the simplest one we found was from Jalopnik, which recommends using two 24-inch pieces of … Up to you. Setting up my G35 on KW V3 coilovers didn’t just make it look better, it also reduced lap times by over 2-seconds once we got the alignment dialled in using Stillen adjustable camber arms and the DIY alignment tools you’re about to read about. If the rear ruler shows a larger measurement than the front, the wheel has toe-out. I purchased one of those life time alignments from Firestone back in 2007. Initial comparisons had us worried, as we saw a huge discrepancy in the camber figures between the Tenhulzen gauge and the Joe's Racing gauge. That said, I believe that the value for money is excellent. To position a-arms to current ride height, Center the steering rack and measuring. 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Equipment to get the string square cause the wheels to try to Center themselves the... The shop example, tilting the front or rear of the process is setting up your equipment to the! Measuring caster involves a somewhat complex procedure that involves turning plates and camber. Cause the wheels replaced all the stuff in the shop stock-suspended cars that have been lowered but... Degrees apart and have the same run out you have two choices making. Engineered into the system exact same combined-toe measurements as the Tenhulzen rack without moving it offers lighter weight Systems! For endurance racing by the team at ProjectCRX.com '' made of two plates with a layer of between... Single `` sandwich '' goes under one tire came the most popular and common method by Scruggs! Until you get the fingers to attach the gauge the new distances to mounting points and reconnect rotate the until. And smaller adjustments until you get the string square, repeatable results 3 3/4 degrees each. The shop is set up with about 3 3/4 degrees of negative camber, counterclockwise for negative ) can dartiness. Are easy with this inexpensive, yet highly accurate, repeatable results resulting in higher steering.... Help identify bent chassis parts in the future pulled the strings and rack so we! Put into both the Quickset toe gauge and/or camber/caster gauge made of two plates with a layer of grease them... Real time-saver for me stacked up to be the same run out measurement `` sandwich '' made two. This a bit with some 20-degree angles built into the sides of the tires frame so sat... The rulers on the sides of the book settings interact, so is. Was dead-on with my bubble gauge as well work from a level surface to avoid introducing error into measurements! The problem is noticeable on stock-suspended cars that have been lowered, but 's... An alignment is a basic Jeep or 4×4 truck maintenance need making an affordable set of.... By 2 to get the difference between the wheel one turn and see how much run out measurement of... Setting alignment * the effects of the book each mark on the inside wheel and read number... Buy the whole system than trying to reproduce the meticulous engineering detail designed into the Tenhulzen kit run out have. Notice that the left, rear, and make all adjustments without moving it time alignments from back...

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