- Hey, what's up, YouTube? Welcome to yet another video
by Ratchets and Wrenches, and today I'm gonna show how you can do a front wheel toe
alignment on your vehicle. All you need to do this is
basically a piece of rope, some random objects to tie this to, a basic set of wrenches
to do your adjusting on your tire rods, and also a pair of jag stands and a jag if you have to lift up your car to gain access to your
inner and outer tire rods. Okay, as you can see, I've already raised the front of the vehicle
and put it on jag stands. That's because I want to
get the camera underneath and show you how you do the
adjusting on your tire rods, but if you can access your tire rods with the wheels on the ground, you know, you don't have to
raise the front of the vehicle. You can just leave it on the ground. Just probably a good idea
to put a piece of cardboard or maybe even a tile underneath your tires so that when you do the adjusting it can move a little bit easier. Also, you want to roll your
vehicle about a yard or two while holding the steering wheel straight, so that way you relieve any tension that's on your steering or
suspension components, okay? Okay, what I'd like to do next is to get underneath the vehicle and loosen this locking nut, which is on our inner tire rod. And we're gonna be doing
this on both sides, and we'll need a wrench. In my case I'm gonna be using this adjustable locking wrench. It makes life a lot easier, okay? There we go. Also, after you loosen this make sure this can move freely, okay? If you're doing this
on an old tire rod end there might be corrosion here, and as you go to lock this back on you're gonna be turning
your inner tire rod and then throwing your
adjustment off, okay? So make sure this can move freely. Okay, same thing on this side. There we go. Okay, after loosening our locking nuts we wanna get in the car and straighten out our steering wheel. Just make sure you just turn
it a little bit a couple times so you get the play out of it, and then just straighten
it as much as you can. And obviously after you do this you don't want to touch
the steering wheel, you don't want to touch your wheels. When you go to adjust it make sure you only grab the inner tire rod and you don't touch nothing else so you don't throw off this steering wheel from the center position, okay? Okay, what you're gonna do
next is to just tie a rope to whatever you can get your
hands on that's sturdy enough and also it's high enough that when you tie the
other end to another piece that this travels through around the center of the wheel, okay? Okay, next you straighten out the rope and then you just take up measurements and you're gonna do adjusting
until the measurements on them both, the distance between the rear
side of the wheel to the rope is equal to the distance between the front side of
the wheel to the rope, okay? And also, if this rope is moving around you might want to wait a couple seconds for it to stop moving so you can get an accurate
measurement, okay? Alright, here we go. So on this side we got about, we got exactly actually
half an inch on the rear. Okay, on the front we're 1/16 short, so we're gonna do some adjusting, okay? Alright, we got it now. We got half an inch on this side, and exactly half an inch
on this side as well. Okay, so next we'll just do the same thing on the right side. Okay, next we go over to the front wheel and we're gonna take
our measurements here, and as you can see on the
front side of the front wheel we got about 5/8, and on the rear side we
got one inch and 1/16, so we're way toed out on this wheel, so we gotta get underneath the car and adjust our toe in, okay? Okay, and then where we
adjust your toe is on this car since the inner and outer tire rods are located in front of the wheel hub, if you turn the inner tire rod clockwise instead of your outer tire
rod you're pulling it in, and if you turn it counterclockwise
you're screwing it out, therefore creating more space. So since we need to pull this side in and adjust your toe in, we're gonna be turning this clockwise. And since our toe measurement is way off we're gonna turn this about one full turn and then go out and
measure it again, okay? Okay, so now on the front side we got 3/4, and on the rear we've got 15/16, so we still need to turn
that inner tire rod in more. Also, as you're adjusting make sure you roll back this locking nut, because if you don't
then you're gonna end up moving the wheel and throwing
everything off, okay? So make sure there's a lot of space here. Okay, so now we got 7/8 on the front and we've got 7/8 on the back as well. Okay, we got exact
measurements on both sides, but as a general rule of thumb you want your front wheels to be toed in for a total of 1/8, which means 1/16 toe in on this side and 1/16 toe in on the other side. That's to help keep your car
going straight down the road, because if you've got
them exactly centered on the exact measurement and your wheels are exactly straight there's a chance where
you're able to wonder, but if they're toed in a little bit it'll help keep it go
straight down the line, okay? Wanna do maybe quarter turns, and then keep checking until you get the perfect measurements
overall, 1/16 toe in. Okay, so we got 13/16 on this side, and we got pretty much
exactly 7/8 on this side, so perfect, there is toe
in of 1/16 on this side, and we're done on this side. Now we're just gonna do the
same thing on the other side. Okay, and the last step is
to tighten our locking nuts. It's a very important step. Make sure you don't forget this, okay? Again, here's this side. Alrighty, so next we gotta lower the car and go for a test drive, and hopefully we're gonna be able to drive straight down the road, okay? Alrighty, here we are on our test drive, and as you can see we got
the steering wheel straight and we're also traveling straight. And we're running red
lights, but we're okay because we're doing a
very important video. Okay, and that's all there is to how you do a front wheel
toe adjustment on your car. Now depending on how picky you are it might not be perfect, but you know, you can
do this adjusting again. On most vehicles you can adjust
the toe on your front wheels with the car sitting on the ground, so you can just reach in there
and make some adjustments to get it exactly right. Okay, so yeah, hope this
video people out there. If you like the video
please give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you
want to see more like it and I'll see you next time, thanks a lot.
