How easy is it to do your own geometry setup?

[martyjmcfly 0]

I've got tired of handing my car to some oik who does a shite job of aligning my wheels and the steering wheel not being perfectly straight. I try to be sympathetic but i bet i could do a better job as it is my car at the end of the day.

 

The geometry of the car was set up by my local independant VW specialist with manual tools and the car felt fantastic.

 

Then i had some supension work carried out and the car was set up with the latest laser jiggery pokery and its not as good.

 

Is it possible to still buy hand measurement tools and do the job myself as this would save 40 quid and i'd have a perfectly straight steering wheel! Yippeeee

[H8RRA 0]

done tracking with a tape measure in desperation but its not exactly easy or spot on.

 

tracking, camber, castor etc are far from easy without decent equipment which is where the difficulty comes in as most people wouldn't be buying the equipment necesary to do a good job. the minimum really is tracking gauges.

 

If you tyres wear okay, take your steering wheel off and put it straight - don't understand your reference about steering wheet as its not really relevant

[Blair 0]

There aren't enough splines on the steering column to get a really accurate straight-ahead setting - what these places SHOULD do is set the steering wheel straight then modify the geometry around that.

 

I know of one VW specialist who shall remain nameless (this comes from a good friend of mine who used to work there) who used to do a quick job, checked by eye (not gauges!) and just take the steering wheel off and bolt it back on "straight"...

[Walesy 0]

Moved

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Sometimes doing it with hand tools can give better results than machines.

 

4 wheel jigs are too specific... it's a certain setting or nothing (if you want greens on your print out) where as the old fashioned way allows more scope for preference tweaking. Stealth used to do camber and toe on the floor (which was uneven!) with jacks and the car always used to feel spot on....but it involved rolling the car in and out of the workshop etc to settle the suspension.

 

I'm getting my camber knocked back to 0.8 on Tuesday, which will result in a red print out, LOL!.... sod the machine, I want it my way!

[davidwort 0]

There aren't enough splines on the steering column to get a really accurate straight-ahead setting - what these places SHOULD do is set the steering wheel straight then modify the geometry around that.

 

I know of one VW specialist who shall remain nameless (this comes from a good friend of mine who used to work there) who used to do a quick job, checked by eye (not gauges!) and just take the steering wheel off and bolt it back on "straight"...

 

You'd be surprised how accurate a good eye can be for camber settings, can't see how you could do tow in/out or alignment though :?

[StuartFZR400 0]

Yeh, I take it 0.8 gives a splayed effect Kev ----, / \

surely if thats the way you like it, its ok (within a %)

 

Should go round corners better right? Do you get bad uneve nwear on the inner edge of the tyre usually kev?

[rmn 0]

I had some nice camber on my old vr6 golf, i set it by eye, took me ages with rolling the car up and down the lane but eventually it handled excellently till it ate the tyres :lol:

mind you that was about 10000miles later

[24V Renshaw 0]

My old man has his own tracking kit which has always been superb. Its just long straight bars which you rest (on little nylon ended mounts) against the wheels. One bar has a mirror at the end, one has a pin point light. The light shines, hits the mirror reflects back and you can see where it comes back to. With a bit of simple trig maths you can work out the angle of toe in/out. Trouble is that is now 150miles away from me so not good for after working on the car!

Camber guages can be bought from Demon Tweeks etc.. but are difficult to use accurately as they assume the car is on a perfectly level ground.

I will have to go to a garage to get my tracking done when I replace the rack etc.. soon and will probably go to Awesome GTi as I assume they will have an alignment system for lowered cars, which most places don't!

 

Jay

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Aye, 0.8 negative is tucked in as you've pictured. VW ran negative camber on the VR6 because they made the track wider but didn't make the arches any wider - by any significant amount - to compensate, so tucking the wheels in got round that one, cheaply, LOL! if you look at the Golf 3 VR6, it's camber is something like +0.5!

 

Yeah my tyres do start to feather on the inner edges after a few 1000 miles as most of my journeys are straight A roads and M ways.

 

I do like -1.2 in the dry as it gives a sharper turn-in but in the wet it can cause understeer. 0.8 is the happy medium :-)

[24V Renshaw 0]

Mine is on -1 and the inside edge is going now. Worth it though for the extra grip on cornering, especially now the diff is in :)

 

Jay

[rmn 0]

Now to work this out am i right in thinking that parallel with the rear wheel is 0

then the mk3's +.5 is /

and the the -.8 that kev is talking about is just .8 of a degree in?

so if the suspension is all set the tow would be fairly easy to set on a flat surface?

 

sorry if this sounds stupid, i just get confused when setting supension

[24V Renshaw 0]

We are talking about camber and the rears are not 0. Infact Corrado rears have a fair bit of negative camber and toe in.

 

Jay

[rmn 0]

ah sorry

[Blair 0]

There aren't enough splines on the steering column to get a really accurate straight-ahead setting - what these places SHOULD do is set the steering wheel straight then modify the geometry around that.

 

I know of one VW specialist who shall remain nameless (this comes from a good friend of mine who used to work there) who used to do a quick job, checked by eye (not gauges!) and just take the steering wheel off and bolt it back on "straight"...

 

You'd be surprised how accurate a good eye can be for camber settings, can't see how you could do tow in/out or alignment though :?

 

That's the problem - if the toe and alignment were spot-on and you adjusted the camber alone, the toe and/or alignment would then be out. The only way you could ajust it without risking any knock-on effect would be if the steering arm joint was right in the centre of the wheel, ie. about where your wheel bearings are :)

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Now to work this out am i right in thinking that parallel with the rear wheel is 0

then the mk3's +.5 is /

 

+ is \ and - is / ;-)

 

- camber gives more grip on fast turns as the tyre is flatter on the ground, using more of the tyre width.

 

+ camber gives lighter steering and more turn-in grip in the wet as the tyres lean over onto the outer tread blocks more, but grip in fast turns is less as the contact patch is reduced.

 

It's about concentration of weight....elephant's foot v stilletto heel. In the dry you can go as wide and negative as you like, but in the wet, it works against you.

[markp 0]

are these camber settings the same for a g60 as they are for a vr6 considering the weight difference?

[Kevin Bacon 5]

G60 runs different camber mate, I'm not sure what it is to be honest. I'm sure it's the same as the MK2 though, normally + 0.5

 

The VR's negative camber is to counter the extra track width more than weight.

[rmn 0]

Cheers Kev!

Anyone got any ideas on front toe settings?

[Kevin Bacon 5]

0 or +0.05 mate ;-)

[davidwort 0]

G60 runs different camber mate, I'm not sure what it is to be honest. I'm sure it's the same as the MK2 though, normally + 0.5

 

The VR's negative camber is to counter the extra track width more than weight.

 

16v's and G60's can run a bit of negative camber quite happily, makes cornering much better and I've never had any tyre wear problems (-0.5).

A tiny amount of toe-in is OK as the geometry tends to pull out under acceleration.

[chrisw 0]

This guy has a few methods:

 

http://www.allpar.com/fix/alignment.html

 

The thing is you are trying to measure v. small changes in a system with a lot of potential errors. I think you can easily use his pin method to measure toe to less than half a mill (if you are careful!) on a tyre radius of about 30cm or so. This will give a toe resolution of roughly 0.2 degree. Any better than this you need to extend the radius you are measuring the deflection at or use a more precise measuring technique than a tape measure. A good length stiff bar clamped to each wheel would be good but any imperfections in the wheel rim or bar are going to be critical. I think you should do a wheel runout check and pick two spots on the rim with the same runout***. I see no difference between this followed by manual measurement with a well mounted stiff bar and what the garages do with lasers. Whatever they are doing it isn't interferometry and you will be able to do better if you take your time and calibrate your stuff properly. Camber is more difficult similar principles apply. You can measure camber surprisingly well with a plumb bob and a ruler on a stand. You are looking for the wheel deflection from vertical. Each mill of top to bottom difference will be about 0.1 degree or so. An hour isn't a lot of time for the garage to make a whole series of precise measurements and adjustments in controlled conditions. I wouldn't be surprised if some "4 wheel alignments" are not as precise as claimed.

 

 

I have used the fishing line method. It is very fiddly but I think you can potentially achieve excellent results. Once you have two parallel lines running down the sides of the vehicle you can view by eye whether the front wheels are toed-in or out relative to the line. Adjusting to zero toe can be done very accurately if the fishing lines are super-parallel to start with. I reckon you could achieve +-0.05 easily like this. I did read a really good write up of this method on the web, do a search.

 

Chris

 

 

**** There has to be at least two diametrically opposite points with the same runout, even if your rim is bent as a banana.