A range of wheel alignment tools for DIY and Professional use. Toe must be set last. Finally, we set up the strings and rack so that we could get an accurate 4-wheel toe measurement on the car. This worked great on my RZR’s using shelving brackets. How to Fix the Alignment on a Car (with Pictures) - wikiHow 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. Verify your procedure by weighing the car, jacking up one corner, and rechecking the corner-weights after settling. Tips on Setting Alignment* The effects of the various alignment settings interact, so adjust caster and camber first. That’s a valid assumption, as DIY car alignment is considered an oxymoron. * Disconnect front and rear sway bars to eliminate the effect of sway-bar bind. 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. If you want something preset and a little easier to use then check out the new QuickTrick system in the shop. Adjust jack to position a-arms to current ride height, Center the steering rack and start measuring to either toe in or out. But if you enjoy the satisfaction of knowing how to do it yourself, or if you expect to be making enough alignment changes that taking your car to a shop every time would be expensive and impractical, you'll benefit from adding alignment skills to your mental toolbox. 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. * Some toe-out on the inside tire in rebound can help corner entry by creating an Ackerman-like effect as the car turns in. * 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. 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 problem is noticeable on stock-suspended cars that have been lowered, but it's prevalent on street rods with fabricated front suspension. I usually have to do a bit of trigonometry to get the actual degree measurement, so this is a real time-saver for me. Up to a half-degree more positive caster on the passenger side is often used on production vehicles to compensate for the effect of crowned pavement and keeps the vehicle from pulling to the outside edge of the road. 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. 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. 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. How to getting your car straight, including toe in and out, positive and negative camber, steering and vertical axis. A wheel alignment can seem like black magic. Mercedes DIY Wheel Alignment . While the most popular and common method by Ray Scruggs use strings, I decided to go stringless. I don't know of any other system that comes close to delivering this level of functionality for $500. Offerings include a 2-Wheel System, Camber Gauges, Toe Plates, and a 4-Wheel Alignment System 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. Words like "caster," "camber," and "toe" are enough to deter anyone from delving any further into the topic. 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. Just read the metric side and remember that 1mm = 0.1 degrees. 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. 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. How-to: Jeep 4×4 Front Wheel Alignment. This was an indicator that nothing was bent and that I wouldn't have to touch the caster. I purchased one of those life time alignments from Firestone back in 2007. Posted 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. DIY: 1998 528i REAR Wheel Alignment I just did the REAR Suspension Overhaul, and needed to do a 4-wheel alignment. - Robertm5zw3 Only physically moving or adding weight can change the distribution within the car. You can also determine this by feeling for irregularities in … This gave me a difference of 0.4" overall or 0.2" on each side. See all 32 photos. - My trusted local indy wanted $90 but the next appointment is 10 days from now! Excessive camber results in accelerated wear on the inner or outer shoulders of the tires, but most street cars can benefit from up to 1-1.5 degrees of negative camber. Last year I overhauled an 5hp19fla automatic transmission and replaced. Caster was dead-on with my bubble gauge as well. 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. 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. Then, I replaced my ball joints and lower control arm. Find 2 places on your wheel that are 180 degrees apart and have the same run out measurement. Do-it-yourself wheel alignment guide. A+ - leedon314 Fantastic seller – Great experience and post-sales support is wonderful. 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. 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 front ruler shows a larger measurement than the rear, the wheel has toe-in. But for that price I would rather buy the whole system than trying to reproduce the meticulous engineering detail designed into the Tenhulzen kit. DIY or QuickTrick Alignment . That's it. (Small differences are the result of rounding.). The most difficult and time-consuming part of the process is setting up your equipment to get accurate, repeatable results. 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. 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. Both the Quickset toe gauge and my Longacre toe plates showed the exact same combined-toe measurements as the Tenhulzen rack. by Roger * 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. - dirtboy720 Super 4 Wheel Alignment System!! All we needed to do was to fold out the rulers on the sides of the gauge and get the difference between the measurements. 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. QuickTrick™ Alignment 2019 4th Gen Series offers lighter weight aluminum Systems for Home, Pro, and DIY wheel Alignment. Our road-race Mustang is set up with about 3 3/4 degrees of negative camber per side. By clicking Sign Up, you agree to the  Terms of Use. Turn the digital gauge on and hold the zero button down until it reads 0.00. 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. Rob Siegel. This took quite a bit of time to achieve, not in the least because I kept snagging the corners of the frames with my pants. Because alignments require mind-numbing precision and frequent double-checking of numbers Martin Szwarc, regular driver of ProjectCRX, is helping me with this task. However, if you’re repairing steering and suspension parts, you may throw off your wheel alignment. 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. The Tenhulzen 4-wheel alignment system is a cleverly engineered tool whose brilliance is tarnished ever so slightly by its flexible aluminum construction. The procedure is pretty straightforward, and I was relieved to see the caster angles on the left and right front wheels come within 0.1 degrees of each other. Alignment shops have very specialized and expensive tools to get the job done correctly. High amounts of positive caster cause the wheels to try to center themselves as the vehicle moves forward resulting in higher steering effort. Car was running straight, nice print out of specs, no problems. Excellent product for DIY alignment. A turntable is a "sandwich" made of two plates with a layer of grease between them. 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. 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. DIY front wheel alignment. 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 … Cardboard turntables can be … Up to you. Notice that the left, rear, and total weights did not change. on March 26, 2016. Record the measurements to speed up the process the next time. Camber adjustment is very straightforward with the Tenhulzen gauge. 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. 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. Multiply whatever it says on the gauge by 2 to get the caster angle. During our alignment session, we found a wealth of time-saving features cleverly engineered into the system. 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. Tie Rods. Now, there are a few ways to look at this. 2×4 ; Laser level clamped to rear wheel, use the ruler to measure the front and rear edge of the front wheel to figure out the angle. Cross-Camber: A side-to-side difference in camber settings. This will also help identify bent chassis parts in the future. For cruisers where an alignment is a set-it-and-forget-it proposition, that's probably OK. We just couldn't get the fingers to grasp the wheel consistently. 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