Well the silver car needs an alignment now but once I get the coilovers, and camber plates now shortly it will definatley need one once I set my ride height. I was out of town on a road trip and was reading an issue of car craft and they had an article on doing your own alignments at home. I'm not afraid to do things on my own, but I'm curious to see if anyone here does there own work at home and wanted to know what you use. I'm always willing to add a cool tool that I will use in the future on other cars as well like my blazer the dakota or the silverado so it will get plenty of use out of it.
I'm looking at some things on summit racing right now....for caster/camber
this or
THIS and was looking at these
TOE Plates
Anyone have any input?
I do my own...but I use the alignment rack at work...so I guess I can;t really help you out. A guy I know does his own the way your talking about doing it on his mustang, I'll ask him about it.
It's cool any input you can give would be awesome, since nobody in know does there own alignments.
Its a PITA, you need a FLAT surface, plumb bobs, and crap. We never went into too much detail on it in Tech school because out in the work force we'd be using the computerized rack.
Tinkles
2003 Cavalier 1SV
Bagged and Blown
Tinkles- Thanks for the input, I'll have to do some more research on it. Hopefully I can get some more input from here but I'm going to hit up some of the other forums I'm on and see what I find out. I have no problem taking the time to do it since I'll never own a computerized rack, I just hate throwing money toward alignments, when I got another car/truck to drive if need be while doing the cav or anther toy.
go to an ntb. you can buy alignment time
pretty cheap. unlimited alignments for 6months, a year, 2 years,....
My car may run 18s, but I can do your taxes in 10 seconds flat.
JBO lube - they would never have enough in stock and we'd never see RodimusPrime again
^ I didn't know that thanks for the heads up.
Here's how I do my toe in/ out and don't laugh, it works.
I first use levels long enough to hang out on both sides of the tires so I can measure the ends of both from side to side.
I also do this with the car on stands so that clearance is provided.
I then center the levels as so.
You're set now to take your tape measure and measure the distance from the front of the tires and the back of the tires. What this entails is that you take the tape measure and on the front of the two levels, you take a reading of the distance between the levels outer edges. Jot this down. On my car, I was reading 63 inches exactly on the front of the levels.
Doing the same thing as you did with the front, measure the distance from edge to edge of the levels (being careful not to mess up their balance or grip on the tires) and jot down the reading or distance you get. I got a reading of 63-3/8 inches. So this tells me that I need to do a little bit more adjustment to the toe and that the toe is is still a bit off. Your measurements may be a bit more off so adjust as needed to get the same distance for the front and the back for that perfect alignment.
Most cars have 0 toe in so that means that the distance from the front of the tires are the same as the distance of the back of the tires. It won't hurt that you have a little bit of tow but no more than an 1/8 of an inch or so. Make sure that you have no toe out or having more distance in the front measurements than what you read in the rear.
Once you have your toe set and you've adjusted it to the best you can, lock the lock nuts back down to the tie rod end by holding the tie rod end with a wrench while turning the lock nut towards the tie rod end and tighten it down.
Remember too, since your steering wheel is straight, you want your wheels to be straight too. So this is why I encourage you to take a good close look at the wheel alignment before you make the adjustments and try to figure how many turns you may need to the right side or left side tire to get the wheels actually straight. If you don't have it perfect once it's done and your steering wheel is a bit off, you can either make further adjustments to correct this on the appropriate wheel or do take it to your alignment shop to completely straighten the wheel.
So keep in mind that if your drivers side is turned in or out more than your passenger side, you'll have to do more adjustment to that tire to keep the steering wheel straight once it's all done.
Hope that helps but I've done this to all my cars with success.
All of my tires have had no issues and usually get 40K miles or more from a set of tires.
Ghetto but it sure works.
On the camber, I use one of these with the car on wheel stands and wheels off of the car with the lugnuts tight enough on the rotor so that it gives me true readings.
I use a degree finder used for carpentry directly onto the rotor to take a camber reading something similar to what you see below but with the rim off and the degree finder magnetically attached to the rotor.
I do this for both sides and see how off I am.
I also use one of these to verify my evaluation by watching the bubble and where it is on both sides of the car to measure camber.
Again, this is put directly onto the rotor for taking the readings.
Once I figure out where I need to adjust, I then make adjustments as needed to get the same reading on both sides for camber.
It works too.
Again, this is ghetto but I swear by it getting you close enough on the camber that you can drive it with no issues or worries that it's close enough to being right.
With camber plates or camber eccentric bolts, you can then setup your front end the way you want without all the high costs of an alignment shop.
I'm sure there'll be some arguments about this but again, I've not seen an alignment shop in decades so I know that my settings are on target for long tire life and no pulling or awkward steering issues.
Good luck with it.
Misnblu.com
Newbie member since 1999
Thank you Dave and JBO! 
Btw, once I get my camber plates I'm going to get this too. SPC Performance 91000 - SPC Performance Pro Series FasTrax Adjustable Caster Camber Gauge Kits
This is the kit I've always wanted and works great from those that have owned them.
This also had excellent reviews by SportCompacCar magazine so if they advocate this it's worth the money spent.
But this ultimately will be in my hands one day soon.
In the mean time, it's all ghetto. lol
Misnblu.com
Newbie member since 1999
Thank you Dave and JBO!
Misnblu- That is exactly what I was looking for! thanks for taking the time to type all the info up with pics.
I honestly don't have tires last that long due to auto-x and being a "spirited driver", but I'm going to give it a shot. Once it's all done I might take it to a shop to see what the specs are at as well to double check my work. Thanks again and I'm waiting to see the feedback from others.
personally, i would recomend getting it aligned on a rack when first installed. get it done to spec, to save tires, then mark the camber plates where it is. that way you can always go back to factory camber quickly and easily. then, you can follow the instructions posted above for if you adjust camber at the track or something.
