Front wheel alignment. How hard is DIY adjustment?

[KarlT]

Hi.
Have put my lowered caravelle back to stock hieght.
Both new tyres are wearing on the outer 2" of tread.
I know from past experience that garage will want £60 to adjust this.
How difficult to do it yourself? Which bolts/nuts do I adjust?

Cheers in advance!

[asahartz]

The adjustment is not difficult in itself, but having the accurate gauges to do it is. Though I can do the mechanical work, I don't have the gauges and it's a job my bus will be going to the experts for.

The £60 will be cheaper than the gauges, and cheaper than new tyres too.

[CovKid]

Steve (Mocki) may be able to advise on this but I do know that when I owned beetles, it was possible to set this up with a broom handle with a screw in the end, the idea being that on perfectly level ground you check the distance between front wheel rims and adjust for toe-in or toe out.

[CovKid]

This is a pretty good description. Obviously its a different vehicle but the principles hold true for all vehicles. You'll need to refer to specs in manual.

http://elantragtclub.tripod.com/elantra/id554.html

[CovKid]

Heres advice from my Dad (long time hackney carriage taxi driver):

If the previous owner dropped suspension but didn't adjust camber, than you'll only need to do tracking and he says he used to do it with a piece of string as after a few months on Coventry roads, pot holes used to throw tracking out something chronic and even his mechanic said it was usually good enough with the string.

However, if they dropped suspension AND adjusted camber too, just take it to a garage - end of.

Toe in/out is simply the difference between distances of wheel rims on front axle at front of wheel and rear of wheel. Ideally its tyre centres, but rims are a pretty good guide - hence a broom handle method. Use the string to see if you're toe in or toe out and adjust accordingly.

The broom handle method which I used, is cut the handle half an inch short of distance between rims and put a screw in the end that you can adjust in or out - like a caveman style measuring stick. Wind the screw in and the stick is shorter, wind it out and its longer - if you get my drift. This gives you a rough DIY guage to work out if you're toe in or toe out and by roughly how much. I used to do most of my bugs like that and never got tyre wear so it does seem to work.

There, knew those blasted beetles would come in handy.

[KarlT]

The broom handle method which I used, is cut the handle half an inch short of distance between rims and put a screw in the end that you can adjust in or out - like a caveman style measuring stick. Wind the screw in and the stick is shorter, wind it out and its longer - if you get my drift. This gives you a rough DIY guage to work out if you're toe in or toe out and by roughly how much. I used to do most of my bugs like that and never got tyre wear so it does seem to work.:

Are you saying you check between the rims to make sure the are dead parallel to each other?

[asahartz]

No, they shouldn't be parallel, they should be about 2.0mm toe-in, ie closer at the front than at the back.

[CovKid]

No, vehicles are generally toe in or toe out but not parallel. I don't know toe figures for T25 offhand but you can look them up. One distance will be longer than the other.

[CovKid]

Sorry asahartz, you beat me to it

[CovKid]

You just have to hope they didn't 'twiddle' with camber.

[Tex Ritter]

Check the measurements as near to the centre edges of the rims if you can.

[maxstu]

KarlT,
After replacing my wishbone bushes, I needed to find a company to readjust camber on my T25.

The only place I could find was bloomin' miles away. And they wanted to charge £125.00 plus for their all singing and dancing four wheel laser guided system. Sod that for a game of cricket I thought ...

......then I thought some more! Looking in Wiki I found this... https://club8090.co.uk/wiki/St ... /Alignment

Couldn't really get my head round much of it. All I knew was the camber should be positive. In other words, the top of the wheels are further apart than bottom of wheels (if measured across the axle) by a very small amount.

Thinking I couldn't make things any worse I put together the following....

I cut a straight piece of 2x2" wood baton to the same diameter as the standard 14" wheel rim. So it fitted snugly just inside the lip. To this baton I cable tied a metre spirit level and mounted the whole contraption to the wheel in a vertical position.

The spirit level showed the wheel to be vastly out.

So I turned the loosened eccentric wishbone rod until bubble in the spirit level hit it's window centre line. In other words the wheel now is exactly vertical. Turning the wishbone rod a tad further gave me half bubble on centre line. THAT'LL DO ME. Held rod in place whilst tightening nut. POSITIVE CAMBER achieved.

Repeated for drivers side. Quick test drive. ZOOOOM! Then rechecked both sides with home made tool. Still the same.

Now I know this setting is probably miles out. But I've covered 4K since. Her steering feels great, particularly with new bushes. Wear is minimal & constant across spread of tyre too. Besides, how do you adjust correctly to take into account road camber, crummy pot holes knocking the cr4p out of your settings, weak shocks or extra weight on one side etc?

I gonna keep an eye on premature wear, just in case.

[CovKid]

Well put maxtstu. Its like Krypton tuning and the like. All this fan-dangled technology is fine if you're driving a finely-tuned aston martin or something, but as Wheeler-Dealers described the T25: "underneath its basically a builders van" and whilst we'd all like everything running tip top, when you've got cupboards down one side, probably a gas bottle, and unpredictable cross-winds, its hardly going to have the grace of a sports car and somewhere there has to be a compromise.

Before the advent of laser set ups, people used bits of wood, string, and even set things by eye and ok, maybe they're not so accurate but they worked reasonably well. Its possible to get damned close with home-made gear providing you're on level ground.

Curiously, your description of setting camber is one I've heard before and if I remember rightly, the Chilton handbook for 'tuning' the beetle mentioned something similar.

You do need to be pretty close to ensure good handling and to reduce tyre wear but heck, £125 to set camber? Its bits of wood for me too

Heres a DIY camber guage that should work very well too: http://www.instructables.com/id/Hands-f ... ber-Gauge/

Maybe its about time we put together an easy guide on setting camber and tracking and to hell with their 125 quids. Keep an eye on this thread KarlT, you may just have started something here....

[ermie571]

ooh yes! I would definitely be interested!

But for the numpty's and learners (in which I include myself) when you learn-ed peeps do this guide, please can you include pics, or the exploded diagrams so we know what parts you are talking about!

Thanks
Em
x

[CovKid]

Naturally, plus a numpties guide to terminolgy that mechanics use to bump up the bill.

"Your retaining grommit is gone" is a good un.