DIY alignment at home ?

Longacre's tools and equipment are excellent at reasonable prices.

Longacre Alignment Tools (longacreracing.com)

 

I have not seen any computer stuff to do this at home. I use compuscales for corner balance ($1000), (a bucket of water, tubing, ruler to ensure flat floor) , straight ruler, L rule, laser level, toe plates, 2 tape measures (150bucks total) . no strings. Work time would be cut down dramatically if I had Hubstands ($1500). It comes down to how often you do this to make the investment in stuff to reduce the time it takes to do the job.

 

The easiest way to do toe in/out adjustments at home is using a tape measure. You mark the centers of the tires at the back (around 3 o'clock) and measure the distance between the marks, then roll the car forward until the marks are facing forward at the 9 o'clock position and measure the distance again - the difference in measurements will give you the actual toe in/out of the tires based on the center line of the wheels/tires as they travel down the road. I use this method and it works great.

For chamber, you can use the very accurate digital angle meters sold all over amazon or just use a T square and ruler against the rim edge and a little trigonometry and get darn close - close enough for anything but F1 racing. Also, keep in mind even 1 PSI tire pressure can affect handling and tire pressures routinely vary up to 3-4 degrees based on driving and even just which side the sun is shining as you drive down the road.

As far as caster, my personal feeling is if your steering wheel centers itself when you drive down the road, then don't bother messing with caster outside of a race car.

Lasers and transducers are great and all, but don't let them fool ya - a lot of times simple, old school "by hand" methods often work just as well if not better.

I was just talking to a few local driveline balancing shops about balancing my driveshaft (on my Toyota) and asked each if they have a machine and what RPM's they balance driveshafts at, etc. The owner at one highly recommended shop explained that he balances it by feel and that your hand is far more sensitive than any of the machines. I have to agree with him based on a lot of my own work on cars. And after speaking with several of the "we'll put your driveshaft on a machine and push a button" shops, he sure seemed like the only person who knew what he was talking about.

I just installed four new tires and balanced them - while watching TV in my living room. Do I have a $20,000 tire mounting & balancing machine in my living room? Nope, just two tire irons from 1950 and some cardboard. Balanced all four myself using a $99 static balancer to 2-3 grams (around 10 times more accurately balanced than most dynamic balancing machines).

Just my 2 cents, but often times old, simple methods work well.

Ray

 

My horror story about caster is: I had a steering wheel shimmy when I changed to 16 inch wheels from the old 14s. Bought the hub centric adapters no help, had it aligned, no help, rebuilt front suspension, no help, rebuilt steering rack, no help. Finally bought an alignment tool that measured the caster and voila! Alignment shop that charged extra for exotic cars didn't know that you can move the ball joints in the suspension arms to adjust caster. I don't remember the numbers but I had one sides caster that was 1/2 of the other side,