I was an alignment technician back in the day. When you lower the car, you should jounce the front and rear of the car to make sure the suspension isn't bound up. The first thing we would do is center the steering wheel and use a tool to lock it against the seat. We would also use a brake lock. The way you aligned it, you set the toe to the car. With an alignment machine, you measure the "thrust angle" of the rear wheels. You then set the toe using that measurement. This is because rear wheels aren't always in line with the center of the car.
or hearing some idiot flooring it with a cherry bomb on their car cause yeah making the engine louder is a great way to get a cop to pull you over and then they cut to stupid thing off when they get tired of noise tickets
"I don't know what I'm doing!" God, that's refreshing to hear, some RU-vidrs (& no, it's not who you think) act like they know what they're doing, and the end result is disappointing. But here, I can sit back, watch, and feel good about the end result. Case in point: this alignment. It is good enough to get you around until you can get this car dialed in. I salute you!
Ive done a string alignment, its within 1/16th” of tolerance. The trick is to set, measure, set, measure, set, at least a 4 times. Go for a drive, reset your rig and do it again, and then, go for another drive and do it again. At this point, you will have done it 6 times, and provided your balljoints, shocks, tie rods and bushings aren’t worn out, you’ll notice that between the 5th and 6th time, the alignment will stay at what you set it. It will measure out exactly the same after a drive. That’s when you are done. Its time consuming, but, its free.
The best part about getting an alignment at a shop is that you aren’t sitting in your car. So while you’re actually using the car it will be precisely out of alignment based on your body weight. If you do the alignment at home you can set weight in the driver seat and actually get it so good that it will never wear down your tires unevenly.
@@markm0000 Excelent point. In da old times car magazines even advised to put in bag of something to simulate driver's weight when doing alignment yourself :)
Always a pleasure to watch you fix cars while not knowing anything about them myself and learning a few bits here and there. Clever camera tricks and jokes are a big reason I love watching you Robert. PS: and birbs too 😄
Heey my cool fellow. Just a friendly suggestion: When you machine a sleeve, for a hole you plan on welding said sleeve in- leave a skirt on the sleeve, so you can weld the skirt and not distort the bejesus out of the sleeve. Or don't, whatever :) Love I know nothing Alexander .
I’m loving this little rorty Yugo! Great fun little buzz-box. I cannot believe $200 for an alignment over there! Full 4-wheel alignment in the UK is about £40 and some places even offer it as a free safety check before winter!
The solution I use for toe is similar to your first setup. Next time, shoot forward, should be fairly clear out to about 20 feet. Compare the difference between the two lines right in front of the bumper, and 10 to 15 feet out. I've gotten within 1/2 of a degree this way
I've adjusted the toe by straightening the steering wheel, pushing the car back and forth on a smooth surface so the suspension is settled, lift one wheel by the A-arm, spin wheel and scribe a line in the rubber with a screw driver and repeat on the other side. Lower onto news paper or something clean and then roll back and forth. Then have someone help you measure the forward most line you can reach with a tape measure and then the back and compare to what you want it to be; 1/4" toe-in or whatever. You need something clean on the floor so you dont lose your reference line when you are rolling it back and forth.
I have always done much the same by ratchet strapping PVC pipe to the wheels and having 8 feet stick out the front! A degree or two off and it's inches off at the ends. Why do I bother doing it myself? Well USED to be most places wouldn't even align Jeeps with big tires other than with a tape measure which I can do myself. Now a lot of bigger shops won't align a vehicle with ANY suspension mods. I mean yeah, you can find somewhere but plenty will say either their machine won't cause the numbers don't match up since they plug your vehicle into the computer OR they talk liability. I got turned away from TWO shops that wouldn't mount my tires (oversized by like an inch) on my Cherokee because they didn't match the size on the door. The third shop made me sign a waiver because my speedo wasn't calibrated. Why not? Cause it actually reads spot on now instead of the normal few MPH low! I just mount and balance my tires myself now since all the stuff to do it cost me less than having someone else do it!
Oh and how do you measure the pipe using my method? Measure the distance between the pipe as close to the tire and then measure it at the end (I use 8 foot pipe) and adjust until the two numbers match up meaning there is no toe in/out or do the math and set a but of toe in if you need to. You can make it pretty accurate since the length of the pipe amps up any inaccuracy. If you are off by only a small amount at the wheel end it's WAY off at the end of the pipe making minute adjustments very easy. Think about it this way. If the pipe was a mile long and you are off my even half a degree the ends a mile away would be like a football field apart.
The only vehicle I have ever seen with a calibrated speedo is a police car. It literally says calibrated on the speedometer. If it doesn't say calibrated on the dash, it can be off as much as 1-3mph, so Im not sure why a shop would require a waiver for a car where the speedo wasn't calibrated, since almost no car sold to the public is actually calibrated. Its one of the reasons cops rarely pull someone over for driving a few mph over, because their speedo might be reading the correct speed, and if they did write them a ticket, they would be banking on them just paying it to avoid the hassle, because it would be a simple matter to goto court and say your dash read the proper speed and have it tossed out, because judges also know a vast majority of cars on the road do not have calibrated speedometers....
@@ixamraxi It's very common to change speedo drive gears or reprogram the speedometer when changing tire sizes on a car or truck which was the point of that section of my post. They wouldn't install the tires without the waiver because they were not the stock size and my speedometer had not been recalibrated for the new size. I assume so if I got a ticket I didn't try and come back and blame them and claim ignorance.
for the CV boot... an old speed trick was to put zip ties in the accordion parts to keep them from spreading when going too fast... when moving too fast they would sling too much of the grease away from the joint and we all know how metal likes to rub against metal... it would likely help the super glue parts stay together longer at least.... side note... I want my yugo back... i LOVED that thing...
You take a pole or narrow pipe of a 100mm less lentgth then wheel inner width. You put a bolt and a nut and screw a bolt in pipe. You measure front of between tires, unscrew bolt until it fits width, then compare back of between tires. In Zastava factory there was a tool of that sort with measurements, but they are actually not needed. There is a tool with "U" kink if there is an engine in the way.
Front wheel drive usually needs about 2 degrees of toe out so when going forward, the wheels pull forward to be in a straight line. Rear wheel drive needs 2 degrees of toe in so the wheels get pushed apart when being powered from the rear.
Back when I was a kid, we'd spray paint the tire and etch a line in the tire by using an nail on a board or something against the tire and spinning it. We'd then use a measuring tape to measure the distance between the lines on the front and the back of the tire to get a measurement for toe in/out. It worked fairly a'ight.
I was also told by an old dude that you want to have a slight toe out as the tires will want to toe in a hair once the tires start pulling the mass of the car down the road.
You can get a little ball level angle guage at a lumber yard for a few bucks. Thats how I set camber. You can set toe in with a stick measuring the difference between wheel front and backs. I tend to go for zero on everything and its usually fine. Go hands off on the freeway at 70 and see if its pulling. Go both ways to check for road crown. Easy peasy.
A front wheel drive car usually has a bit of toe out. The drive force will pull it back to 0 toe while driving. Rear wheel drive cars usually have a tiny bit of toe in. The resistance will push it back to 0 while driving
What I've noticed driving an old VW Polo 86c, which has very similar suspension is that a little toe-out makes the car very stable and even driving it on the track felt really good as the turn-in was very nice. It had 8" wide rims with +20 ET and that pushed the front wheels 25 mm out of the fenders.
You NEVER want ZERO on your alignment. At least on camber, bare minimum you want 1-2deg of negative camber. You also want a slight bit of toe in, as suspension will naturally toe out in the front under power/movement. All the slop in your suspension will naturally let the tires toe out as it gets all the forces put on it going down the road. I'd start off with 1.5-2.0deg of camber. I've ran as much as 3-3.5deg of front camber on my old '90 240sx as the harder you drive (in corners) the more camber you need due to body roll. Foe toe in just slightly toed in is enough, 1/8 to 1/4in in is all you want. What you did so far is awesome! Putting down (delrin?) sliding blocks to get rid of suspension bind and getting rid of slop is awesome! Now that things are at least in a reasonable range, and equal side to side massive gains in drivability were had! Congrats! Now get things in a more reasonable range and enjoy!
You take an extrudeable aluminumtube (From a tent f.ex) and use that as a measurement tool from inside the rims. Once at the front of the rims, than at the back. Then you do the same procedure after you moved the car 0.5 wheel revelations to check for inconsitancies comming from the rims. You can do that on any parking space. *Non native english speaker ... hopefully undestandable enough* Best regards
This is far more scientific than how we aligned our '72 Beetle. We leant an old house door against the side of the car and eyeballed it from there. It actually worked surprisingly well.
You can do the same thing with a magnetic level to better eyeball your camber setting sticking it directly on the rotor's flat surface in between the wheel studs
The correct response to the tyre clearance/rubbing issues of, of course, to get some metalworking tools and teach yourself how to make boxes arches, Lancia Integrale / e30 M3 style. It'll probably suit the boxy look of the car, too.
Last time i did it, used a digital level, for camber I'd check with the suspension loaded, lift it up then use the level again to adjust by the degrees off, only had to lift it 2 times. Toe, I had symmetrical tire pattern, so i just went off center line front and read of tire. Went 0.5 deg neg camber, and like 3/16 toe in.
As a professional mechanic who's sent hundreds of cars off to several different alignment shops, let me tell you that I've never gotten one back that I was 100% satisfied with. I'm not sure if it's their incompetence or poor calibration of the alignment racks. What I can tell you is that if it's not a customer's car, I just do an alignment by eye, and I can get it to 99%. My method is very simple, but you need a good eye for straightness. For camber, you've got the right idea. Check against a flat surface. For toe, lay down in front of the car, and look straight down the front tire to the rear tire, with your eye at the level of the center of the wheels. It's exactly like looking down a 2x4 for straightness, or bow. The rear tire off in the distance is like a single point. The front tire is two points, the sidewall at front and rear. Line up all three points in your line of sight, and boom, you got it. There is some nuance, of course, like making sure the steering wheel is straight before every time you check (your adjustments will turn it). And settling the suspension before every time you check - although the slippery blocks are a good idea. They also have slide-y platforms for this exact purpose.
That was awesome to watch. I actually enjoy doing alignments, granted i had like a $10k machine 😂 i have tried it a couple times on the ground and its pretty hard, i just tried to get it close enough using a laser pointer from the back tires. It was just a rough way for me to get them close enough so the car drives straight enough to get the alignment done, after i had replaced the tie rods
An old coworker told me many years ago that your ear lobes transfer heat really well. Basically if you touch something hot with your finger and it feels like its burning, quickly hold your finger to your ear lobe and it transfers the heat away from your finger. I thought the guy was crazy but for the last 10 years I've been doing that and saved my fingers from a lot of second degree burns. I doubt that would have helped with hot glue on a finger tip though.
Somewhere in a barn in the Home Counties a floppy-haired colossus stirs and says "Hang on, didn't I do a video about this very topic a few weeks ago? With tool tips and everything."
You've got the basic parts down - I've successfully aligned my cars in the past using similar methods - making straight edge devices that I bungi cord to the front wheels, notched to hold twin tape measures (one front, one back) to dial in the toe, and then using a digital gauge to adjust caster. A little trial and error and it's usually close enough. Also used the string method using the rear wheels as a reference (when doing a RWD car with solid axle).
A couple hundred dollars for a front wheel alignment? WTF???????? I do it here in Portugal from 10-15€, and here I was wondering from the thumbnail why the fck you'd need to do the alignment yourself, other than just to show how it's done, and how it can be done without fancy equipment. Props to you for being able to do it, and being able to save money on it. Love from Portugal
A couple of hundred dollars?! Bloody hell. I can never predict what in the US will be staggeringly cheap compared to Europe, and what will be unjustifiably expensive. All that aside, I'm all behind this kind of DIY tomfoolery.
dude I want an old school beater just so i can build somethin nice for cheap and not be too upset about destroying parts if i have too much fun with it.
Kind of hilarious to charge a car battery from a DC source, through an AC inverter, back to DC via your lab power supply... I bet you could get an appropriate DC boost adapter for like $6 on ebay and plug it into the cigarette lighter port on your 'box'.
My old man has an automatic limited edition black with louvers 1991, 20k miles. Dope car. Still cant believe how cheap it was. Even todays money it was barely 8,000 dolars brand new!! I mean, 40 years ago? Its a cheap car for people barely getting by. It gets hate but obviously it wasnt meant for everyone. Nor is something as small as a mitsubishi mirage today, thats still maybe 12k 13k new plus tax.
You do know that you can look up the specs for alignement right ? Your not supose to zero stuff , toe has to be in. The plumbob setup was fine , you could have easily set the toe correctly. Rule of thumb is 1/8 on each side. For the camber they sell a cheap magnetic tool.
