Alignment, done ! Options

[J P Stein]

Hey, we went out in the rain today.
Fortunately the alignment chop is only a half mile away.

Here's what we gots:

Camber R/F -1.99 L/F -1.99
R/R -2.3 L/R -2.25

Caster R/F 5.08 L/F 5.31

1/16 toe in at both ends.

Pulled another 3mm shim from each side in the rear.
I"d like to get more caster, but I'd have to do some more grinding around the strut mounts. Maybe next winter.

A short drive shows the car to be VERY responsive.
The ride is....er....firm....but not as bad as I thought it would be. Vracers really suck in the wet.

Now if the weather would cooperate, we can go play Sunday. It ain't lookin' good, tho.

[Dave_Darling]

Those things are a digital level with a fixture to hook onto your wheel. You may be able to make the same thing for less; I saw a digital level (or digital angle-finder) for about $80 at my local Home Debit.

Caster is usually not measured directly, just inferred from the camber change you get when turning the steering wheel the same number of turns in each direction.

Toe is not measured this way. You have to find or make some sort of center-of-car reference line and then measure how far the front and rear edges of the tire are from this line. You can do this by measurring out a given distance from the centerline, setting up jack-stands with strings tied to them, and then measuring the distance from the string to the tire or wheel lip.

There's a Pelican tech article that describes one method of checking camber/caster/toe. There are others available on line as well.

--DD