Tire Eating Audi

[Jason Gray]

(If you are messing with camber, always do that prior to adjusting toe as camber adjustments also alters the toe).  
To measure toe, I roll the tires over a long piece of cardboard that is slighlty wider than the weel track width, then point the laser dot verticly down from centerline of each wheel and mark dot on the cardboard to effectivly mark the track width of the wheels (where projected by the laser) onto the carbdoard. (also takes a small bit of eyeball adjustment to compensate for difference of track width at center of hubs vs the width at groundlevel, any neg camber will make the track slightly wider at the ground than it actualy is at the hub.) Once you have the track width marked on the cardboard, remove from under car and set it standing against wall, a known distance from the hun. 10' works out to be a good distance provided you have the room in garage. Then, use a bungee to secure a laser level onto the wheel so it is pointing horizontaly forward, onto the cardboard. Center the laser dot from one wheel onto the carboard dot (by moving the cardboard) then switch the laser to the otehr wheel (this is where having two lasers is really nice) and measure the distance from the projected laser dot to the second mark on the cardboard. WIth a little trig, you can determine how the toe measured on the cardboard at 10' from the hub relates to the toe at the tire and get a very accurate measurement. I ususally just set my front and rear for zero toe, dont even have to do the calculations, just set it up so that the laser dots hit the cardborad dots for both wheels. The longer the distance you have the carboard from the wheels, the more accurate the measurements will be. Getting the thrust-axis of the rear wheels aligned with the centerline of the car is a bit more involved but is a good idea to prevent the rear from crabbing down the road sideways like an old dog. 

Jason Gray
Anchorage, Alaska

Tire Eating Audi - Qwick cheap alignment 
Richard J Lebens rick-l at rocketmail.com 
Mon Dec 22 16:34:41 EST 2003 

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This sounds interesting.  What do you do, Point the laser (on the
wheel) to the back of the garage, mark it front mark it, repeat for
other side and do trig?

--- Jason Gray <jason510 at att.net> wrote:
> Get a laser pointer level - these are selling for less than $15 these
> days, looks like a carpenters level but also has a laser pointer. The
> laser level rest nicely on the flat surface of the 4Kq wheels and
> with a little bit of trig, you can easily get a very accurate reading
> of the toe. (works even better if you have 2 pointers, one for each
> side). 
> 
> Jason Gray
> Anchorage, Alaska


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