Nate Vincent:
Hey guys, Nate Vincent here with FCP Euro. And I'm going to show you
how to align your car at home for less than $50. So alignments are pretty key. When it comes to
driving your car, you need to have the tires pointed in the right direction. If they're not
pointed in the right direction, you're going to see bad tire wear, bad handling, possibly crooked
steering wheel. All of those things are things that are going to happen when your car is not
aligned. We have a race team here at FCP Euro and we've learned a lot about alignments. We go to
race tracks all around the country and do up to 15 to 20 alignments in a weekend. The way we do that
is we use string alignments. String alignments are extremely accurate and they get the car pointed
in the right direction. So right here, what we're going to do is we're going to take about $50 worth
of items purchased at a hardware store. And we're going to go through every little detail you need
to know to get your European car aligned properly and going down the road straight.
Nate Vincent:
So why might you need alignment? If you're looking
at a race car, you're going to need alignment to try to get the most out of the car, whether that
is just trying to get a [inaudible 00:01:01] lap or get those tires pointed in the right direction.
That's the reason you're going to need an alignment there but on a street car, there's many
different reasons why you might need alignment. Maybe you replaced your struts or you replaced
your ball joint or tie rod, something like that. Anytime you replace any critical suspension
component, your alignment is going to go out and this is the way to get it back. Also, normal
street driving might cause a bad alignment. If you hit to curb or maybe a pothole on the road,
something like that is going to bend the wheel out of alignment. And this is a way to get your car
trued up and driving down the road straight.
Nate Vincent:
So before we get started, the first thing we're going to do is talk about the two
parameters that we're going to focus on adjusting. Those are going to be toe, which is the angle
in which the wheels are in relationship to one another. So if they're toed in or toed out like
this and the other thing is going to be camber, which is the angle of the wheel like this, so the
top of the wheel leaning in towards the car. Those are the main two parameters that you're going
to focus on, on most European cars. If you want to know more about these parameters and how they
affect the car, check out our race cars explain video on our YouTube channel. So the first thing
you're seeing here and you're probably wondering why I have two pieces of PVC pipe in front of me.
It's a pretty odd part to be working on a car.
Nate Vincent:
The reason we have this PVC pipe as this allows us to create two parallel
bars, parallel bars that are going to sit in front and behind the car. These parallel bars are going
to allow this fishing line right here to go front to back in the car and create a perfect square box
around that car. That square box that we're going to create around the car is what every single
toe measurement is going to be based off of. Now, we want to make sure our wheels are pointed
in the right direction while we're doing all these measurements. So we have a couple straps right
here. These straps are going to loop around the steering wheel and they're going to hold the
steering wheel perfectly straight while we work on the car. One of the things that often
happens, if you start loosening up tie rods and moving things around the steering wheel will
shift and you don't even know it happens.
Nate Vincent:
So it is really to make sure that your steering wheel is locked down. Now, the
other thing you're going to need is a couple jack stands, which I'm sure you all have at home. This
is going to basically hold the parallel bars up and we're going to need a couple metal scales or
rulers like this, which is just going to basically get the measurements off the front and the back
of the wheel. I highly suggest that you have two of these as it will make it much easier to do.
Now, the last thing we're going to need here is for our camber. So to find our camber angles,
we have a basic angle finder. This was purchased for about $30 at a local hardware store. You can
find them online or at a local hardware store. And this is the key element in getting the camber
angle or the lean of the wheel and making sure we have the wreck measurement.
Nate Vincent:
The one thing you're going to want to do is make
sure you have the correct specs for your car. These are usually pretty easy to obtain and
they're pretty relevant information. The specs are going to include the camber angles for both
front and rear axle and the toe angles for both the front and rear axle. Negative toe is going
to mean that the wheels are toed in basically the fronts of the wheels are pointed in towards
each other and positive, a plus number toe is going to mean the front of the wheels are pointed
away from each other. That is a key thing to know. The other thing you're going to want to note here
is that oftentimes factory specs come in degrees and we're not going to actually be measuring
these things in degrees. So there's a really nice little conversion chart here that shows you
how to convert degrees to an actual measurement, depending on the wheel diameter you have.
Nate Vincent:
The reason the factory does at win degrees is
because they often make cars with different size wheel diameters and it's very difficult to
get an actual physical measurement. So degrees accomplishes all of that. So by converting from
degrees and knowing what size wheels you have, you can get a simple measurement that can be measured
in millimeters or fractions of an inch. So without further ado, let's get started. Let me show you
all the tips and tricks we've developed over the years to get your car aligned and pointed in the
right direction. All right, so before we begin, the first thing we want to talk about is the basic
orientation of the car. As you can see, we have the car positioned on the lift here and we also
have these scale pads underneath it to lift it up a little bit, lifting the car makes it a little
bit easier to do the alignment, as if we have to crawl under this car to adjust the toe or the
camber or anything of that nature, that said it doesn't necessarily have to be done that way.
Nate Vincent:
Also, the other reason why we have it on the
lift is so we can lift it up and show you a more clear camera angle of actually adjusting the toe,
loosening up the tie rods and that sort of thing. So don't need to have it on a lift and you don't
need to have pads under it. The pads are extremely helpful, and the lift just makes it a little
bit easier for the camera to see. So the first thing we're going to do to get the basically,
box set up around the car is we're going to measure the track with. What I say box around
the car is we are going to use the two PVC pipes over there to create two parallel bars
that sit in front and behind the car. Those parallel bars are going to have a measurement on
them that is exactly the same distance apart.
Nate Vincent:
When we have that exact same distance apart on the front and
rear bar, we will run a string down the side, both sides of the car and that will create a
parallel box around the car. That will allow us to take measurements off the wheel and see exactly
where the toe measurements are. We'll record those measurements and then we'll see if we need to
make any adjustments. So first things first, with the tape measure, I'm just going to go
from the outside of the left front wheel, over to the outside of the right front wheel.
This is a rough measurement, it doesn't need to be perfectly exact. And I'm going to see
that this is about a 70 inch track width. So taking that 70 inches, we're going to add
about five inches per side to make sure the bars stick out a little bit to the sides of the car, to
give us room, to run the strings up and down.
Nate Vincent:
So I'm going to take 70 add five per side. That's about 80 inches. So we're going to
first cut our PVC pipes to about 80 inches long. So right here, we have some schedule 40 three
quarter inch drain pipe. This is basically picked up at Lowe's or Home Depot or anything like that.
This costs about $4 a length. So these are 10 foot lengths. So we have about $8 worth of pipe here
and I'll show you what we're going to do this. So the first thing we're going to do is, like I
said, we're going to take the 70 inch track width, we're going to add five inches per side. So about
80, maybe give us a little bit of a buffer. So we're going to cut this around 84 inches.
Nate Vincent:
So right here we have seven feet or 84 inches,
I'll take my little Sharpie and I'm just going to do a mark here. This measurement does not need
to be perfectly exact because we're actually not going to hang anything off the ends of these
pipes. We're just trying to get them in the right neighborhood. I'm going to mark the other
pipe as well and then we'll cut them and to cut these pipes, this is VC. You can
use a Hacksaw, you can use a wood saw, honestly, we're going to use a little
reciprocating saw but yeah, anything will really cut this stuff. This is a, probably you
can cut it with a razor blade if you wanted to. All right. So using my reciprocating
saw, I'm just going to do a quick cut through this.
Nate Vincent:
So right here, I've drawn a quick diagram
of the front of the car. These are the tires and we know that the track width
on this Mini is about 70 inches across. Now we know that we cut the parallel bar, the
PVC pipe to 84 inches. What we're trying to do is we're going to put a little notch in this
pipe that are exactly the same front to back and they need to be approximately three inches away
from the wheel. So doing some quick math here, we have 70 plus three, that's going to be 73, plus
three on the other side, that's going to be 76. So now we know our strings are going to be
76 inches apart. Now we need to take our 84 that we have here, subtract 76. That's going to
give us eight inches. We are going to split that eight inches in half. And so we know that we're
going to measure in about four inches right here from the sides to make our notches for our
strings to run down the side of the car. So let's go over and do that.
Nate Vincent:
So now we know we need to go in four inches
from the edge. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to quickly align these two perfectly
and I'm going to measure in four inches. And I'm going to mark it on
both of them right there. So the first one is not that critical but
by the time we do the second one, we need to make sure that these two notches and those two
notches are exactly aligned on these two bars. What I'm going to do is I'm going to cut through
and I'm only going to cut in a little bit. I'm just going to put a notch in this, we're
not going to cut all the way through. As you can see there, I just cut
through a little notch about a third of the way through the pipe,
leaving the rest of the pipe there. I'm Going to do it on the other side.
Nate Vincent:
So now we have two notches. So now to make sure
that we are perfectly aligned on both of them. I'm going to go get one of the metal rulers
or scales that we have and I'm going to slide it in the notch that was just cut. So we can cut
the notches on the other side, exactly the same. So now using this metal scale, what I'm going to
do is I'm going to slide it into these notches, which is going to align these two notches
perfectly in the same orientation. So then I can go to the other end and cut the notches
right across both of them simultaneously. So actually what I'm going to do is I'm
going to flip this over, just like that and let this sit on the floor, holding it
perfectly aligned. Now, moving down here, I'm going to measure in four inches again and
I'm going to put a mark just on one of them.
Nate Vincent:
The key here, like I said before, is that the notches need to be perfectly aligned
between the rear bar and the front parallel bar. So now using the tool, I'm going to pull this up
a little bit, making sure those two stay aligned, pinch them together and I'm actually going to cut
the notch at the same time across both of them. Make sure everything is aligned there.
Come over here and you can see that the two notches are perfectly aligned on both of
these. If you're concerned, you can always run a tape measure and just verify. So I'm going
to run the tape measure to the bar there, come here. And I can see that we are exactly 76
and a 16th and now I'm going to go to the front bar and do the same thing.
Nate Vincent:
And we are 76 and a 16th. All right so the
next thing we're going to do now that we have our parallel bars cut and notched
properly, we're going to use the jack stands to lift the bars up to the center
line of the wheels. As you can see here, I'm going to take the front bar. I'm just going
to run it right across and now that I'm running it right across, we can actually lift this up
to approximately the central line of the wheel. So you can see here, I'm just approximating this.
We'll get more accurate with the string. One, two, three, four, five notches there. We'll do the
same on this side, one, two, three, four, five, right there and do the same on the rear.
Nate Vincent:
Again, you're looking for the center
line of the wheel. So if you can see here to the center line of the wheel. So what we're
doing here is we're going to take the steering wheel and we're going to take these ratchet
straps. And we're actually going to loop them around the steering wheel and tie down
to the seat or the seat bracket, something of that nature. And we're going to make sure the
steering wheel stays in the 12 o'clock position. That means that when we go to take the
measurements and make any adjustments on the suspension, the steering wheel is always going
to be straight and we'll remove that variable from the equation.
Nate Vincent:
All right. So now that I have this strap
around one side of the steering wheel, I'm going to loop it around the bottom of
the seat here and I'm just going to give it a couple ratchets to put some tension in it
and then we're going to clamp the other side. So you can see it's pulling a little
bit to the right. I'm going to clamp the left side and make sure it's
straight. Okay. Again, up and around and back through. And now I'm just going to
come down to the bottom of the seat here, make sure we stay clipped.
Nate Vincent:
And now I'm just going to verify
that the steering wheel is straight, so maybe one more click on the left side and now everything looks nice and straight.
We're going to go take the measurements on the suspension. All right so now that we have the
two parallel bars set up, we're going to take our fishing line. You can see I've actually tied
a weight to the one side of this fishing line, it makes it a little easier. You can also
use electrical tape to tape it to the bars but we're going to do is we're
going to go through the notch here and we're going to run this
all the way up to the front and we can take this and lock it. And we can just
let that dangle right over the front, just like that. And you can see that the two weights on
both sides create attention across this line.
Nate Vincent:
And this line will now be running parallel up through the side of the car. That said, we do
need to adjust it. This is a great time to have a friend help you out and we'll show you how to do
that. All right. So right now, what we're going to do is we're going to set these strings and the
parallel bar. So it's even on the front axle, side to side. So how we're going to do that is,
you can do this yourself by running back and forth but it's a lot easier if you have two people,
basically we take one of the scales and we go to the center of the wheel. So we pick a spot on
the center of the wheel. We measure from that spot and we will read the numbers back and forth to
each other until we get the exact same number.
Nate Vincent:
When we know we have the exact same number on the center of the wheel, we know that
this bar is aligned on the center line of the car, side to side. So Ben, what do you read?
Ben:
135.
Nate Vincent:
Okay. So I'm reading about 94, so the bar needs to
come significantly towards the passenger side of the car. So I'm going to split that difference and
bring it up to about 115. What do you read Ben?
Ben:
I'm at 112.
Nate Vincent:
112. So if he's at 112, I'm at one 15, that means we're going to split this around 113
and a half. So I'm going to go in. All right, Ben, where are you at?
Ben:
I'm right at 114.
Nate Vincent:
114. So I'm going to just
wiggle just a teenie of bit out. What are you at?
Ben:
113 and a half.
Nate Vincent:
I'm at 113 and a half. All right. So now that we
are both reading the same measurement from the center of the wheel to the string, that means
that this front bar and the front section of the box right here is aligned to the center
of the car. So now we're going to go to the back of the car and we're going to do the
exact same thing and that's going to allow us to start measuring our toe off the outside
of the wheel. All right. So you can see we're on the center line on the wheel. So we're good
here. Now, measuring out from the center here. If you have a center point that you can go
to, it is actually better but on these wheels, the center is so deep that we're going as close to
that chamfer as possible. Ben, what do you see?
Ben:
I see a 110.
Nate Vincent:
So Ben's at 110. You can see, we are at 100 on the dot. So we're going to move this
to about 105 and it should be even on both sides. So moving to 105, what do you have Ben?
Ben:
105.
Nate Vincent:
105, I have 105. All right, let's go verify
the front and we should be good to go. So what we've done here is we've taken the
parallel bar in the front, the parallel bar in the rear, we've run strings down the side of
the car and then using an assistant, I basically align them so that box is perfectly square around
the car. That means that this string right here and this string right here is perfectly parallel.
Even though the track widths in the front and the rear of the car may vary. That's going to allow us
to get the toe perfectly straight on this car and get the measurement that we need.
Nate Vincent:
All right. So now using this piece of paper
and this little diagram that I've drawn out, we are going to get the toe measurements for the
car. So you can see when we set the parallel bars, we both measured 113 to the center on the
front wheels and 105 to the center on the rear wheels. So we know that the parallel bars are
parallel to the car. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to measure the front of the wheel
versus the rear of the wheel all the way around and we're going to record those measurements. Once
we record those measurements, we can do some quick math, subtracting one from the other and we can
figure out what the toe out or toe in is on the car. All right. So now taking the scale. What I'm
going to do is I'm going to go to the very front tip of the wheel, right on the center line, making
sure that I'm not touching the string and I'm going to record what the measurement is.
Nate Vincent:
And I'm seeing 92 millimeters, right on the
front and then I'm going to go to the rear. I'm going to do the exact same measurement and I
am seeing 95 millimeters on the rear. All right. So the measurement we got on the rear was 95. The
measurement we got in the front was 92. So now we're looking at this. We have a parallel measure
that we measured from right here, that our string, and we know that this one is longer than this
one. That means that the wheel is actually toed out. So you imagine this distance right
here to the parallel is longer. So the back of the wheel is pushed in the front of the
wheel is pushed out. So that means that the right front wheel on this Mini behind me
has three millimeters, so 95 minus 92 of toe out. So what we'll do is we can write this over
here. We can just say, plus three millimeters. Now we're going to go around the entire car
and we're going to do the exact same thing. And we're going to figure out exactly
where all the wheels are pointing.
Speaker 3:
Few moments later.
Nate Vincent:
So right here, we have the entire measurements for the toe of this Mini behind me, you can see right
here, the first one we did, we had plus three, that means that the front right wheel was toed out
or outside of the car. So the front was further out and that was out by three millimeters. But
then we go over to the left side of the car and it was actually in by five millimeters. So that means
both wheels were a little bit off to one side, which is going to mean the steering wheel is going
to be a little bit of crooked. You can see what I've done now is I've actually summed these up.
Nate Vincent:
So I've taken the plus three, added it to the
negative five. And we get a total between the actual of negative two millimeters toe in. So,
that is a relatively close number of what we want to be. But you can see that it's off a little bit.
So in order to straighten the steering wheel out, we're going to adjust this side and we're going
to adjust this side and that will hopefully give the car a much straighter steering wheel when
it's traveling straight. Now moving to the rear of the car, you can see that we had a 83 up
in the front of the wheel, 84 in the back, same on the left side, 83, 84. So that means we
have one millimeter toe out on the left rear, one millimeter of toe out on the right rear,
which is a total of two millimeters toe out on the rear of this car.
Nate Vincent:
We don't suggest tow out for any cars other
than track cars. It is an aggressive setting that makes the car want to turn more. Obviously
we suggest using the standard alignment settings that the manufacturer provides but in this case,
we're actually going to keep this two tow out to help the front wheel drive car in this case,
rotate around the corners and turn a little better. Now that we have all the measurements from
the car, we know exactly what direction the wheels are facing. We are going to look at the factory
spec that we acquired from BMW. So this factory spec for the R56 Mini says that we have 12 minutes
of toe in, in the front and 24 minutes of toe in, in the rear. So how do we convert something
like minutes to millimeters that we can measure? Let me show you how. So, looking at the 12
minutes of toe in on the front of the Mini, we move over to this conversion chart,
which will be included in this video.
Nate Vincent:
You can see there's two key factors that we need to note when using this
conversion chart. The first thing is that we have a 17 inch wheel on the car. So we're only going
to be looking at this column that is focusing on 17 inch wheels on the car. So this column right
here is the number of minutes. So you can see in the front, we have 12. So we're going to go to
the closest number to 12, which is actually 11. And we're going to move over to this column right
here, which is a conversion to millimeters and you can see that is a total toe in of 1.5 millimeters.
So now I'm going to take my I pen and I'm going to mark that on this chart, 1.5 total. Now going to
the rear, we have a little bit more toe in, in the rear. We're actually at 24 minutes toe in. So we
don't have a number for 24 but we have 22 and 26, so we can split the difference between the two.
Nate Vincent:
We're going to come over here. And that is three
millimeters or 3.5 millimeters toe in. So using that, I can make the assumption that this will
be about 3.2 millimeters of toe in on the rear. All right. So now that we've converted the factory
spec in minutes to millimeters, something we can measure more easily. We're going to compare that
to the measurement that we took on the car when we actually did the first set down alignment, looking
at that, we can see the rear is actually supposed to be plus three millimeter toe in. So that
means that the total toe between the right rear and the left rear is supposed to be toed in three
millimeters, that would equal 1.5 on one side and 1.5 millimeters on the other side, we're going
to split the difference right down the middle. Now looking at the front, we can see that the
total toe in from the factory spec is supposed to be 1.5 millimeters. That means that we're going
to see 0.75 toe in on the right front and 0.75 toe in on the left front.
Nate Vincent:
What we saw when we did the measurement was that
the total toe in was actually relatively accurate. It was actually two millimeters toe in but the big
difference was the right front was toed out almost four millimeters. And the left front was toed in
nearly six millimeters. So that means that the car would be in a crab. So basically while the
total degrees or the total measurement between the two wheels would be equal, the car would be
offset to one side. That would either mean that your steering wheel would be crooked as you're
driving or in the case of the rear, the car would crab down the road, slightly crooked. So
now using parallel lines, we're not only going to make sure that the total toe is straight
but we're also going to make sure that the side to side toe is straight. So the car is not
crabbing and the steering wheel is straight.
Nate Vincent:
So since we're making no changes to the rear because we found it was within
spec. What we're going to do is we're going to lift the car up in the air and we're going to
make an adjustment just to the front tie rods. Like I said, the right front wheel is toed out
while the left front wheel is toed in. So what we're going to have to do, is we're going to
have to move the right front wheel in, toe it in. And the left front wheel is going to have
to significantly toe out. The value between the two of them should be within spec. And we need to
make sure that they're split evenly side to side. All right. So here we are in the right front
of this R56 Mini and the measurement we took on this wheel was three millimeters toe
out or a negative three millimeter.
Nate Vincent:
So basically the front of this wheel is pushed out three millimeter more than
the back side of this wheel. So what we're going to do is we're going to go for a total toe out in
the front of this car of two millimeters toe out. That means we want the right front wheel to be
one millimeter toe out and we want the left front wheel to be one millimeter toed out. So that means
we need to move this wheel in two millimeters. So what we're going to do, that means that this
is going to move out one millimeter that is going to move in one millimeter, making the total change
two millimeters. So knowing that this is the pivot point and this is the measure point. We want to
move this out one millimeter. In order to move this out one millimeter, we're going to extend
the tie rod right here by about two thirds of that one millimeter.
Nate Vincent:
So that's going to be about 0.7 of a millimeter
we're going to extend this tie rod. All right. So now we're going to come up here and we're
going to loosen up the lock on the tie rod. So some will have gland nuts, some will
have pinched like this, so we can just. So this is what locks the tie rod in place and
we're just going to loosen that up a little bit, just to allow adjustment to happen. All
right, so now we're going to take our scale and we're going to measure the tie rod. You can
see, I put some red electrical tape around this, so I have a nice line to measure to, to here.
So we're going to look at this and you can see that we're seeing approximately, looks like 27
and a half millimeters between the two, maybe 27 millimeters flat. The other thing you can
do here is we can look at this thread.
Nate Vincent:
So I know this is a 1.5 millimeter pitch thread. What I can do is knowing that it's a 1.5
millimeter, that means every rotation, it moves out 1.5 millimeters, knowing we want to
move this about three cores of a millimeter. I can say I'm going to do half a rotation on the
tie rod to straighten this wheel out and bring the toe back in. The next thing we're going to do
here is we're going to take this and on this car, it's a 13 millimeter. It may be a different size
on different cars and I'm going to take my 13 millimeter and I'm going to basically adjust this
in. You can see that sometimes these are backwards thread, so basically turning it this way is going
to pull this shorter. I want to actually extend this, so I'm going to turn it this way to extend
it and that's going to push the back of the wheel out and remove some toe from the car.
Nate Vincent:
So making a mark, I can see there's a mark
right there I put on. I can then go rotate this side. All right, so now we're looking to
change the total toe on this side by about four millimeters. So this side was toed in quite a
bit and we're going to actually move the wheel out toe in meaning this side is closer in and what
we need to do is move this out. So that means we need to shorten up the tie rod to move the
wheel out. Now, looking at this, we're looking for a total movement of about four millimeters
and that's between here and here. That's the sum, so that's this and this. So basically
if we split that sum in half, we're looking to move this one out two millimeters and this
one in two millimeters. So looking at that, we can see this is our center pivot.
Nate Vincent:
This is the measure point that we want to move
two millimeters because remember the total is the sum of both. So it's doubled so two millimeters
and this is the measure point. You can see this is about 60% or 70% of the way over. So that
means I'm going to take my two millimeters and I'm going to move that about 60 or 70%. So about
1.5 millimeters and you can see we've made some marks on here and used some red electrical tape to
make it really clear how much we're changing that. So the first thing we're going to do is take a
measurement on this and then we're going to loosen it up and we're going to make the movement. So as
I can see to the edge of the tape, we are about 30 millimeters. So we're going to try to decrease
that to about 28 and a half or 1.5 millimeters.
Nate Vincent:
So we know we want to move this tie rod out about 1.5 millimeters. We
also know that the thread pitch on this is a 1.5 millimeter thread pitch. So we should be good
with actually loosening this up one full turn. Again, this whole process is going to be a little
bit trial and error. You want to definitely do measurement or turns that you can count. So
whether it's a half turn, a quarter turn, a full turn. So you can then go. And when you set
it back down and measure on the strings, you can say, okay, I need to go another quarter turn or
another or half turn. You don't want to just do random measurements that you can't validate
and compare to the actual measurements.
Nate Vincent:
And now take an adjustment wrench. We're going to go on the flats on the inside
here. And like I said, we're going to shorten this distance up because we want to toe the wheel
out. So I'm going to thread this into the tie rod. Here we go. We did one full rotation there,
the little mark is on the bottom. All right, let's see what we got. Let's set this thing down
and run the strings and we'll see what we got. So now with the car back on the ground, we're
going to settle the suspension by basically rolling it back and forth a little bit, just to
make sure it's seated all the way into the ground. And that the suspension has fully drooped
and relaxed. And the other thing we're going to do is now we're going to
set up the strings and we're going to take our baseline measurements, make
sure we have a nice parallel box again and then we'll measure again.
Nate Vincent:
So now that we set the car back down
on the ground and we made sure that our strings are parallel by measuring to
the center of both front wheels and both rear wheels and making sure that the bars
were aligned. Now that that measurement set, we're going to look at the front wheels. We're
going to take a front measurement and a rear measurement and we're going to see how the tie
rod adjustment affected the toe in the front. All right, so now that we've made
the adjustment and we've remeasured, we realized that we are within spec now and
the change we made over to the corner of the car has straightened out the front toe.
We were going for a total of basically two millimeters toe out in the front and we ended
up at around 2.3 or 2.4 millimeters toe out, that's within the spec that we were targeting. So
we're going to basically tighten up the tie rods and we're going to move forward.
Nate Vincent:
So now that we're done doing our toe adjustment,
we're actually going to do our camber adjustment. And the first step to doing a camber adjustment
is making sure the ground you are working on is level. So as you can see right here, I have a
level across the ground and I have the angle finder on it and both are reading zero. So we know
that the level in this garage is flat. So the next thing we're going to do is we're going to lower
the car down. We're going to start taking camber measurements at each wheel. Let me show you how
to do that. To get an accurate camber measurement, what we're going to do is we're going to take
a straight edge like this and run it across the wheels. The key is you really want to make sure
this doesn't touch anything aside from the tire or the wheel, the tire works, the wheel is better.
Nate Vincent:
So if you had something that was about 17 or 18
inches long, that could go from this edge of the rim to that edge of the rim and that we knew was
straight, that the very best case scenario. In this case, we don't have something that's that
short, so we're using this level right here, which is going from the tire here to the
tire here. So that will give me a good, accurate measurement. It may be 0.1 or 0.2 degrees
off worst case scenario but we're still going to get a really good measurement. So what we're going
to do is we're going to run this across here, just like this and we're going to put even
pressure right in the middle of the wheel. So it's basically pushed nice and evenly against the wheel
and we're going to take our angle finder and we're going to put our angle finder right against it.
Nate Vincent:
So now I can actually take my hand off and I
can just look directly at the angle finder. And I'm seeing we are at exactly 2.8 degrees negative
camber. So that's meaning that the wheel is leaned over towards the car. So the top of the wheel is
towards the car, 2.8 degrees. Now we're going to go around the car and we're going to take the same
measurements and we're going to record them all. All right. So we've gone around the entire car
and we've measured what the camber angles are. So in this case, we had 2.8 degrees on both fronts
and we had 0.8 degrees on the left rear and one degree on the right rear. So we are within 0.2
degrees on all four corners. So now I'm going to show you if we were to make a camber change,
which we are not, how we would do that in the front. Looking at this, this is a camber plate but
there is basically two basic ways to adjust camber on the front of the McPherson's truck car.
Nate Vincent:
One way is to extend the control arm, whether
that's through an eccentric bolt or some fancy extension mechanism and that is to
basically push the bottom of the strut out. The other ways with a camber plate or some stock
mechanism that allows the front top mount to move inward towards the engine. In this case, we
have the camber plate. Sometimes you just have eccentric bolts or you may have a slotted hole
that allows for some adjustment from the factory. Typically on street cars coming from the factory,
you're going to see about maybe half, one degree of adjustability in the front camber, same with
the rear. And obviously with aftermarket parts, such as these camber plates or the control
arms in the rear, you're going to see an increased amount of adjustability up to about five
degrees of total adjustability. As you can see, if we were to make a change on the front of
this car, we would loosen up these bolts.
Nate Vincent:
We would move this, we would lock it back down and then we'd do the
act same thing where we got our baseline setting by putting the straight edge across the wheel,
putting the angle finder on it and recording the result. All right, so here we're in the back of
the car and we made some adjustments to the front. Luckily we found the back was actually within
spec so we didn't make any adjustments. That said, there's a couple notes I want to talk about on
adjusting the rear suspension on a car to make sure you can get it right the first time. One of
those things is right here, the camber adjustment. So on this car, this has an aftermarket camber
adjuster. This needs to be done before you adjust toe. So the toe in the camber on the rear of this
car, a rear trailing arm suspension like this, are slightly overlapped.
Nate Vincent:
So if you adjust some camber, you will get some
toe adjustment and if you adjust toe you'll get some camber adjustment. So I highly recommend
adjusting camber first and then moving to toe. The second thing we want to talk about is how
do you actually adjust the toe on the rear of a car like this? So you can see this has a
rear trailing arm. So this aluminum piece right here is the rear trailing arm. And
this actually has four bolts right here that actually mount the wheel bearing directly
to this piece. That means as this piece shifts, the toe and the camber of the wheel will actually
shift along with it. So if we are going to make a toe adjustment to this wheel, what we're going to
do is we're going to take this front mount, which is built it up into the chassis right here.
Nate Vincent:
We loosen the bolts and if you move that
mount towards the inside of the car, we're going to create more toe in. If we move that
mount towards the outside of the car, we're going to create more toe out. So pretty simple stuff
but just to understanding of how these things work together and how to make those adjustments.
I hope you found this video helpful. We showed you how to align your car at home, in your home garage
with basically $50 worth of items purchased from a hardware store. Now, if you're concerned about
accuracy, let me tell you that string alignments are probably the most accurate type of alignment
out there. If you look at any sort of racing, you see GT cars that are upwards of a million dollars,
all the way to formula one cars, being aligned using string alignments, it is extremely accurate,
it just requires a little bit more thought from the person doing the actual work.
Nate Vincent:
Now, when you go to a shop they're using
the same exact process, trial and error to make sure your car is aligned, except they have
lasers and lights guiding them and helping them make it a little bit more user friendly. While the
alignment we performed in this car is relatively generic to most front wheel drive European cars,
there is slight variations. One thing I will say is I recommend doing some research and finding
out exactly how to make the adjustments on your car before you begin. That said, the alignment
strings, the parallel bars and the way we check to camber is going to be the same on all cars
no matter what. If you found this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up. If you want to see
more like this, please subscribe to our channel. And of course, if you have any questions
or if there's anything we didn't cover, please leave a comment in the comments
below. We'll catch you on the next one.
Ben:
Good.
Nate Vincent:
Okay. Finally,
