How to do a quick and dirty alignment (that is often better than the pros.)

I'll show you how to align your truck I took my truck in to get a line because I wanted it perfect I used to do alignments a dealership with the lasers and all that crap and I used to get them just dead sweet on I used to be just awesome at it but anyway I never really knew what I was doing I was just following the computer program a justice do that make it green instead of red get the line right in the middle BAM okay you're done but I took my truck in to get a line since I don't work at the dealer anymore I don't have access to a Lima track and you know they charge me a whole bunch of money gave me a printout and when I got my truck back it was worse than when I took it in and so I'm just like oh so I used to just do kind of rough alignments on trucks because you know they're rough so anyway long story short here's how you do an alignment on a truck because I took it home and I did it way better than the guy that had it with a rack so and that's not going to be the case every time but the guy that did mine had been doing alignments for three years and it sucked so here's what I do you may have seen something like this before it is a cookie sheet and it's a specific cookie sheet it's a nonstick and they do really good job at letting the wheels slip a little bit this one is a silver fancy serving platter I got that a equivalent of a Salvation Army it's called savers we've got di2 Deseret Industries but basically what you do is you look at the back tire and you line it up with the front tire and what I do is you take this surface right here and then you also take that surface and see we're going to have an eclipse this surface is going to get to where it's the same as the other one right right right now so what I do is I look at the back tire and I want the back tire to eclipse at the exact same time as the front tire and in this case they do a little hard with mutters but you want to have it be level and so as you do it BAM so that one's right on now on this steering setup I'm going to need a flashlight I can tell already sorry it's so dark but on this setup see this is where all the steering comes from this is your power steering gear this is your pitman arm that goes to your inner tie rod and even though this is on the left side of the truck this is the right inner tie rod because it goes to the right wheel this is your drag link that goes out there and see there's no adjustment from the drag link which basically is your outer tie rod on the right side and here but you can adjust your just right there and this adjustment is to make the steering wheel straight so you have one adjustment that you can make here for toe or steering wheel adjustment and then you have one on this side and this is a threaded tube and you can just basically loosen the bolts here in here and then grab it either stick a screwdriver in it because there's an opening you're a camera you can go clear on the other side and that tiny little opening you can put a screwdriver and stab it in there and use that to turn it or you can use a pipe wrench for plumbing and grab it over the crack and turn it you want to grab from the crack because when you do that it peels it open to make it slide better well let's look at this one what's this one doing when you look at the disappearance from this right here it's disappearing right right now but we still have a bunch of reveal on the tire when that means that this one is turning into the right too much so what we need to do is because these are on the front side we need to make this longer so because it's on a cookie sheet and it's on the Teflon slippery good one that one's not as good a silver plate it what kind of works if you can get a little dirt or dust or baby powder on the floor then that helps too but basically we're going to lengthen this and we're going to make it so that they're exactly straight front and back we're not going to be worried about toe-in or toe-out screw that noise we're just going to make them perfectly straight with each other and then after they're perfectly straight I'll line the wheel up straight and you see the steering wheels currently to go down the road you have to have it crooked like that so I just drove it I know how it is because I've been driving it so I just set it like that and that's how I made the other side on this side be good like it is so that's what I'll do I'll do the toe first and I'll double check it and make sure that everything straight I'll lengthen this out until it lines up with the rear by twisting this and then once that's good I'll tighten that up and then I'll address this one and make my steering wheel straight again when I did that left app video I did that wheel bearing after doing the wheel bearing I never did an alignment and I was really rough with it with the sledgehammer maybe you remember that or not maybe you seen that as a gingerpower video so anyway it's no wonder that this wheels will turned in a little bit and somebody even called me on it they're like you're going to mess up your alignment hitting it with a sledgehammer and you know I wouldn't do that with a customer car but with my own truck I thought it'd be a fun video and it was I enjoyed it but we need to do an alignment now so show you what it looks like when it's done they look a lot straighter now uh-huh even the steering well but here's the deal I went ahead and did all the align button I started with this far side because it's on the drag link to the steering gearbox err so my disappearing point exactly the same which means that they're straight unless my wheels are bent if there were bands and it's not and then when I go here a disappearing point is the same exactly straight and that was making adjustments on this one you can see that it's in different positions these couplers or clamps or whatever that you have I always like to end them with the bolts on but you know I'll loosen them all the way up and then I'll spread them so that I can put them however I want and then when I'm done and just put them how I want them again and then these ones I couldn't get them loose you know they're not pointing in the same way just because of the angle of things as I asked her it got a ratcheting box wrench and tighten them up real good so all this is straight go down the road straight and then according to my wife who sat in the steering sister iver seat she says that the steering wheel straight so anyway it's all squared up and it took me about 15 minutes or so if I don't like it just pull it back in and do it again you know just tune it up a little bit more it's important on these to have your ear stuff straight because you know like I don't know if any of you guys watch Scottie Kilmer he's got a channel and check him out he does a lot of cool videos he does a lot of quick thumbnail sketches of how to do stuff and I check him out I mean he's a character he's a fun guy but uh remember what I was even say he just did one on a truck a little Ford f-150 the new ones that get 23 miles per gallon highway and about how a full-size truck can get good mileage this is a 3/4 ton and it's turbo diesel and it's chipped which means this thing smokes it gets on it and it gets about the same it gets about 23 to 25 on the highway you know unloaded you know if you're not pulling another vehicle on a you know heavy trailer whatever but basically you want to have your alignment goods it keeps your mileage good and then also the tires on these things are like 300 bucks apiece sometimes more sometimes four or five hundred dollars each so you want good even tire wear if you don't have a good alignment then you get uneven wear this this one's beautiful it has a really good wear pattern other parts of alignment you can adjust the caster on this caster you know like where you're turning points are say these are your ball joints they're not straight up and down or it'd be real squirrely on the highway you roll them back like motorcycle Forks that's why a motorcycle fortune like that too and the way that you do that the way you do a caster is adjust all moves little cams down here you see how it's got a washer that's not just round or centered and then it's got a bracket around it you loosen that and adjust it so that you can push the bottom of the axle forward to get it good caster if you're squirrely you need more caster if it's hard to turn the wheel you have too much caster makes them want to go straight down the road and then also you have camber camber is where the wheel is this way you know if it's this way or this way you want your tires to be straight up and down except for on some of your newer little cars your back tires are actually supposed to be a little bit this way so anyway that's how you do alignment stuff in a rough thumbnail sketch Scottie Kilmer Cano hey check him out it's pretty cool guy I think I've got him on my channel some other fun channels are eric the car guy he does a bunch of fun stuff and then also I really like real fixes real fast they're also on my channel and another one that I really really like the one that I learned from is ADP training Manny does some awesome videos I mean just cool cool stuff so check them out thanks for watching

Channel: briansmobile1

Views: 955,971

Keywords: How, to, do, quick, and, dirty, alignment, (that, is, often, better, than, the, pros.), diy, it, yourself, save, money, on, auto, repairs, with, my, easy, step, by, instructions, Strong, bad, make, aligning, FUN

Id: OzN0Z2HupcM

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2011