How to do an Alignment at Home

Thanks for the in-depth write up. I would much rather do the alignment myself. The alignment shop I went to couldn't loosen one of the cams, so he adjusted it with the ball joint on the LR UCA. Except when I air down, my tire will rub on the UCA. I went back and told him the problem, and he said to file down the edge where the tire rubs so it won't hurt the tire as bad. These are stock 17" rims with 265/70/17. Maybe new rims would help?

 

A small wheel spacer will remedy this.

 

What size of space do you think would be good. Might be dumb question, but would I need to realign with a new spacers?

 

Well found my answer on the alignment.

Also looks like 1.25 spacers would look fine on stock rims with 265/70/17 tires. Watcha think?

Or maybe just a

 

265/70s. 1.25” Spidertrax. Lifted about 2.5”. I ran this set up for almost 4 years with no issue. Tons of clearance between the wheel and UCA. Plus the spacers helped the 265s fill out the wheel wells

 

Looks great! Thanks for the picture of exactly how it would look for me.

 

Thanks

 

Wouldn't it better to just fix the frozen cam on the DS so it could be aligned correctly. Then it would look like the Passenger side with plenty of space and tires where they belong on both sides vs a spacer?

 

This is my toe tool. Just make sure you take the time to make each PVC coupling exactly the same length. I have a shorter piece of square tubing to check camber with the digital angle finder.

 

Truck looks really good. Just wondering what roof rack you have on it? I have the same truck and I am thinking about making a rack for my rtt. Thanks in advance

 

My truck pulls to the right. I think when the dealer did the frame replacement I got a shit alignment, but it's been months and several thousand miles so they won't mess with it at this point. That's my bad but whatever.

Here's my numbers based on following this process as closely as I could:

Camber
P. D.
1* 1*

Castor
P. D.
.5* 1.8/1.9*

Toe
Rr of tire: 75&1/8"
Fr of tire: 75&3/8"

Toe measured using a device/tool similar to the last several posts, made with angle iron laid against the rim with 1/2" Square tubing extending past the rubber.

So if I'm doing the measurements right I have castor way off on the passenger side. Would that cause the pull to the right?

I drive a fair bit these days. One to two hundred miles a day sometimes over rough pavement. I'm seriously considering the lifetime alignment from a place like firestone. My truck is stock and I intend to keep it that way, so stock specs shouldn't be a problem, and I plan to keep the truck for a very long time. Since that's about $150 lifetime vs about $80 for the cheapest one time alignment I can find it seems reasonable to me. It pays itself on basically the second alignment. Is that crazy? I know they don't have a great rep but I'm not sure I want to mess with doing my own alignments.

 

Camber I shoot for 0 to +.04 degrees. Caster could be another degree higher and the Passenger side should be a little higher than the drivers side ( opposite of yours) thats to help compensate for the crown of the road which is most often on your left side. Toe-in I shoot for 1/16 to less than 1/8 with like 35" tires. You are toed out if your post is correct

EDIT : after rereading , you are way toed out .

 

Thanks,

The adjustments are all done with the upper and lower control arms eccentric adjustment bolt thingies for camber and castor, and on the tie rods for toe in/out right?

Maybe I'll give it a shot adjusting things tomorrow and see how I do. It seems I have a way off alignment as it is so really if I do a poor job, at the end of the day, I'll still just need an alignment like I do now already so I'll really be no worse off for trying.

 

if you have adjustable uppers . Set the lowers arms for maximum caster = front cams adjusted in and rear adjusted out. Visualize the lower balljoint ahead of the upper when viewed from the side ( like bike forks ) . If you have SPC type uppers set caster at " D" position. then set camber to 0 and toe in last. Good Luck

 

I have done 4 home alignments now based on this thread (nothing was wrong after each, just re aligned after suspension changes). I've completely removed the right pull by adjusting more negative camber at the right side, and it works well on our trucks.

If I recall, I have 0.2 degrees of positive caster on drivers and 0.0 (neutral) on passenger. That .2 degrees of less camber takes the right pull tendencies right out. Vehicles pull to the side with more camber, from negative to positive.

 

I have stock uppers and lowers. I'm all stock. I did put 3rd gen trd sport coils and struts on and 3rd gen upper control arms (they are same as 2nd gen) but for all intents and porpoises, it's stock.

So, if I have this straight (pun intended):
Castor: 2-3 degrees both sides, even on both sides

Camber: 0* passenger, ~.2* driver (for road crown)

Toe: as close to 0" as I can get, no greater than 1/8" toe IN

And adjust them in that order.

That's what sounds like a good starting point after reading all the various posts.

Right?

Still not completely sure how to accomplish that but I assume it will start to make sense as I get under there and start messing around.

I diy everything else, I'll give this a try too.

 

I really like this. All this setup needs is a means of cutting a 20 degree “sight picture” through the top down view (to measure against a 20 degree protractor gauge), and it’s pretty similar to the $210 Tenhulzan tow, camber and caster plates. Unfortunately alignment is yet another task that we need to learn even if you didn’t get “training” or “go to school” for maintaining cars and trucks..if you care about the way a car or truck feels on the road.

Yeah, Firestone alignments suck. Can’t stand donating money to service providers like Firestone that do less than mediocre work and still expect a full retail price for that shitty service that was performed.

 

Got your caster and camber reversed . camber gets set even . caster is slightly more caster on passenger side

 

Knowing what I have for upper control arms I know to max out my lower control arms for caster . Then I set my uppers to the +2 degrees setting and then adjust camber to 0. With all of that done I should be a little over three degrees positive caster. Only issue I have not monkyed with is fine tuning the caster to end up eith slightly more on the passenger side. Once I get all of my little issues ( new rack and pinion bushings is all thats left) finished front end wise I will take it to a shop some day for a fine tuning. I also have a short piece of the square tubing that reaches from top of my rim to bottom that I throw my angle finder on to check camber. I also knew if I turn the steering wheel 1 or 1.5 turns it equals 20 degrees. I would have to look it up again if I actually had to check the caster for myself again, its been a while .

 

Here's my measurements after messing with it for several hours.

I had a lot of trouble getting castor to adjust higher while still maintaining a decent camber number. It seemed as soon as I got castor numbers to go up, then tried to adjust camber, there went all my castor. Or if I got a good camber number and then tried to adjust my castor higher, then my camber went to shit.

Currently, it drives way better than it did anyway. It still has a slight rightward tendency, but way better than it was.

Driver:
Camber: 0.1*
Castor: 1.1*
Passenger:
Camber: 0.1*
Castor: 1.4* (maybe 1.5*)

Toe: 0" (possibly toed in by an rch)