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Old 12-22-2004, 02:33 AM   #51
2Stroke
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Using a toebar & eyeball method is sometimes more involved than I made it sound, but there's usually no need to repeatedly test drive the car. The steering wheel DOES have to remain centered throughout the procedure. It is sufficient to simply recenter it after each set of tie rod movements.

Also, I never think of the eyeball measurement as a distance in inches, I think of it as how much of the tread pattern I can see. In the picture above, I might think of that distance as "half of the shoulder block". Trying to guess the actual distance in inches or mm won't work.

So if I knew that the steering wheel on this car was turned to the left when driving straight, and the toe bar said the toe was set at zero, I would know these things about the car:

1) Because I centered the wheel before sighting down the edge of the tire, I should be able to see more of the rear tire on the drivers side of the car. That means I need to adjust this side (the pass side) so that I can see more of the rear tire.

2) In order to keep the toe at zero AND center the steering wheel, I'll need to turn both tie rods exactly the same amount (but in opposite directions). The RF needs to be toed in, the LF needs to go out. Because the threads on both tie rods are the same pitch, all I have to do is move them the same number of turns, or fractions of a turn.

Remember that the steering wheel may move every time you move a tie rod. You can have somebody sit in the car and keep it centered. If they weigh the same as the car owner, that's even better.

For the steering wheel to actually be centered when you finish, the side-to-side difference in the amount of rear tire you can see needs to be around 1/8" at the very most. Visually perfect should be your goal.
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Old 12-22-2004, 06:18 AM   #52
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2Stroke---while I have no doubt that your method may work, it would seem advantagious for you to start stringing up the car instead.
We can have the strings set in about 20-30 min. max. Then, you will have accurate measurements for each wheel independantly. We also bought a steering wheel lock, off the net, for about $20 bucks.

If you're interested at all, shoot me a PM and I'll detail how we do it.

Scott
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Old 12-31-2004, 11:30 AM   #53
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Hmmm....lots of great info here.

I used to do my own alignments (back when I had solid rear axles). I got to the point of a front and rear mount on my car that I clamped some 3/4" x 3/4" aluminum square tubing to. It had a tape measure on it so I had a handy setup. The tape was "zero'd" to the car centerline and I went from there.

Worst case from a shop was a GF's car went in. It came back out and was evel one way and dead the other way. The alignment was "in spec" but what they didn't say was that each side was to the wrong extreme (eg: left rear toe in, right rear toe out).
I went back and had them redo it with before/after printouts.

As to equipment, they are just tools. The outcome is totally dependent on the person using them.
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Old 01-20-2005, 09:51 PM   #54
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I am an alignment technician. We are not all lazy or dumb, we just like money.
I will do every adjustment the factory components allow for the regular price. Unfortunatley many of us (NTB employees) work off of commision alone. If you don't have a factory adjustment for camber, and it is needed, I will try to sell the $37.50 a side camber bolts.

On another subject, the best way to get a cheap alignment is to make a friend. With my discount ANY alignment(6mo.,1yr., 3yr.,5yr)is $10.
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Old 01-21-2005, 12:27 AM   #55
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WReggs
I am an alignment technician. We are not all lazy or dumb, we just like money.
I will do every adjustment the factory components allow for the regular price. Unfortunatley many of us (NTB employees) work off of commision alone. If you don't have a factory adjustment for camber, and it is needed, I will try to sell the $37.50 a side camber bolts.

On another subject, the best way to get a cheap alignment is to make a friend. With my discount ANY alignment(6mo.,1yr., 3yr.,5yr)is $10.
the main problem is that most alignment technicians don't know how to do the camber adj. on the wrx's so they tell the non-knowing public that they need camber bolts. it's ridiculous that they do that sort of thing when there are factory provided adjustments.

i had one guy try to sell me 100 camber bolts for my front cuz he said the front doesn't have a camber adj. what bull****.
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Old 01-21-2005, 11:20 AM   #56
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Go to a shop with a hunter machine. If they try to pull it again tell them to look under illustrate adjustments. The computer tells them it has a factory adjustment. I even checked today to make sure.
It is those guys that make me look bad.
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Old 01-22-2005, 12:04 AM   #57
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I agree, for along time before I knew how to turn a wrench on myown car tires plus always told me camber was not adjustable. so off i went everytime. Last time they tried to tell me that(granted it was a 3rd gen eclipse before) told em to **** off and give me my money back.
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Old 03-02-2005, 08:37 PM   #58
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Can someone give me some basic alignment specs. I want to increase handling and reduce tire wear on the front outside edges. How many degrees of negative camber should I use. Can anyone reccommend toe in / toe out specs? I drive very aggressively but put a lot of miles on the car, so I'm looking for a "slightly better than stock" alignmnet
Thanks
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Old 03-02-2005, 09:24 PM   #59
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A stock WRX only has adjustments for front camber and front & rear toe-in. You can and should run the most negative front camber you can, that is, max out the adjusters. This will probably put your camber somewhere between -1.4° and -1.8°. You may want to set both to the max, find out what they are, then adjust the side with the larger value back down to match the other side.

Setting front and rear toe-in to anything other than zero will result in rapid tire wear. There are good reasons to run some toe-out for autox or other competitions, but if you "put a lot of miles on the car", go with zero toe. The spec for toe-in is 0 ± 3mm, but I always want mine to be within .5mm of zero.
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Old 03-02-2005, 10:01 PM   #60
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Also realize that with zero toe and alot of camber your car may want to pull with the crown of the road via caster settings.

May want to adjust accordingly to avoid fighting the wheel all the time.
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Old 03-16-2005, 10:54 PM   #61
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I have heard so many different figures for the max front neg. camber that I don't think anyone really knows what it is.
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Old 03-17-2005, 12:00 AM   #62
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dentspeed
I have heard so many different figures for the max front neg. camber that I don't think anyone really knows what it is.
That's because not everyone's car is the same. Manufacturing tolerances, how bolts were put in; they all play a factor. That's why some get -1.4 and some get -1.8. As usual, the answer is "it depends."
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Old 03-28-2005, 09:43 PM   #63
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I can get -1.3 driver side and -0.7 pass side. Never hit a thing.
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Old 03-28-2005, 09:54 PM   #64
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jblaine
I can get -1.3 driver side and -0.7 pass side. Never hit a thing.
That sounds a bit odd.

Did you loosen everything; i.e. topnuts, both strut bolts, etc and then try to get as much out of it as you could?
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Old 03-28-2005, 09:56 PM   #65
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It has been this way at every alignment shop as I recall.
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Old 03-29-2005, 12:25 AM   #66
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jblaine
I can get -1.3 driver side and -0.7 pass side. Never hit a thing.

welcome to my world! holy cow glad to see i'm not the only one. -1.5 left, -0.8 right. i left them both set to -0.8 and i'm ordering camber/caster plates.

biggly, i've got another thread about this if you'd like to search - i don't recall if you originally saw that thread or not?
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Old 03-30-2005, 08:29 PM   #67
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Okay, so I was measuring my camber and toe, and noticed a funny thing. When tire pressure is at stock 32 with my tires, there is a slight bulge at the bottom of the tire where it hits the ground. This throws off the plywood camber measuring method, as it did with my T-square method as well. Do you guys inflate your tires a ton before measuring camber the homemade way?

Also, can someone refer me to directions on how to string a car to make sure I am adjusting net toe and not getting any thrust angle in the front? With the toe gauge method (where you just measure the front-of-the-tire L-R distance and subtract that from the rear-of-the-tire L-R distance to get the difference), you can't measure thrust angle without finding what parallel and perpendicular to the direction of travel is. Any tips on that?

And finally, and most important, do I have to check my toe if it is on right now if I plan on adjusting my camber? I am just about to loosen the strut top bolts and increase my camber a bit due to some uneven tire wear due to hard cornering, and I wanted to see if toe measurement was required.
Thanks!!
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Old 03-31-2005, 01:49 PM   #68
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Okay, so I adjusted the camber in the front to the max, but since I can't measure it accurately, does anyone have any responses to the above? Is it possible that it increased my toe in? My car really wants to stay going straight, but that could be in my head.
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Old 03-31-2005, 03:00 PM   #69
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When you adjust your camber (i.e. adding negative camber) then toe out will increase. All you have to do is just look at the wheel as you're moving it in and out for camber and you can see that the front of the tire (where the tie rod connects) does not move while the rear of the tire (towards the passenger compartment) will move.

The tie rod doesn't adjust itself for toe whenever camber adjustments are made, so if you added camber you have created toe out which will wear the inside of your tires. This will also create the false perception that the extra negative camber caused your inside edge tire wear when in fact it was the toe.
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Old 03-31-2005, 03:05 PM   #70
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Interesting. Thanks! I could swear though that it feels like the car is less likely to turn, and more stable on crowned roads. I am going to measure my net toe today (since I don't have a way to measure absolute toe yet), and maybe adjust a little.

Any comments on a better way to measure camber or on how to "string" my car?
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Old 03-31-2005, 06:11 PM   #71
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You could use a jig saw or sawzall to cut some relief in the 25" board. Just cut away that part of the board that is touching the bulge. It only needs to touch the ground at the corners.
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Old 04-01-2005, 02:33 AM   #72
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Thanks 2 Stroke, that's what I was thinking, only it wasn't an option yet because I don't have my tools up where I live right now. I'll have to fab something at my parents' the next time I drive down there.
I already created a toe gauge, I just forgot to bring it with me!
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Old 04-01-2005, 06:52 AM   #73
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The adjustment of the rear to make the strings parallel will take some practice and fine tuning of the strings---so dont get frustrated.

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Old 04-01-2005, 01:37 PM   #74
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So you just use four jackstands with string wrapped around them, and adjust until you have a rectangle that is subscribed perfectly around the track of the car? That is awesome. Thanks! I just need 2 more jackstands
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Old 04-02-2005, 11:58 AM   #75
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I use a similar method and agree that it works very well.
For my .02:
Try using heavy fishing line instead of string and place a one spring in each string.Make sure the spring is not placed between the wheels but between the wheel and the jackstand.Keeps tension on the string and makes life a bit easier.
Be careful with the front/rear correction as some models are wider at the rear and some are wider at the front.
It's always better to do it yourself.
"wrx2.0 555" What do you use for a camber guage?
Mike
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