 Bill's Wheel alignment, step 1: find centerline of car |
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| Borderline |
 Jun 25 2006, 10:41 PM
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#1
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Senior Member  Group: Members Posts: 720 Joined: 8-February 05 From: San Juan Bautista, CA Member No.: 3,577 Region Association: Northern California  |
I've been working on a system to do my own wheel alignment at home in the garage. I'm one csob and this is getting to be a lot of work, but I like to be able to do things myself. The general idea is to use a laser light that points in the same direction of the wheel and reflects back from a mirror in front of the car. If the mirror is square to the centerline of the car, you can see the toe angle in the light reflected from the mirror. Having the mirror several feet in front of the car will make measuring small angles easier. The real problem becomes setting the rear wheels as they must be symetric about the centerline of the car.
To find the centerline of the car I decided to use the wheel mounting surfaces with the car up on....jack stands where it belongs. I dropped a plumb bob from each corner and marked it on the garage floor. Attached image(s) 
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Replies(20 - 20)
| Borderline |
Jun 26 2006, 10:56 PM
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#21
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 720 Joined: 8-February 05 From: San Juan Bautista, CA Member No.: 3,577 Region Association: Northern California |
The hardest part of it all was getting the mirror squared to the car. I was using the laser in"dot" mode and things were getting very fuzzy. the I switched it to "line" mode and the line stayed sharper allowing me to align it more precisely. The whole thing was a bit of a PITA, but I enjoyed it. Now that I've got the rear wheels set, the fronts are easy. Also, I had my wife hold the laser gauge on the rear wheel and I took a dimension out from the center of the front wheel. Each side was 6.75 inches. Now I don't need no stinking mirrors to adjust the rears and the fronts are easy. I'm relatively confident in my results but it was a lot of work. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)
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