tools to get to do a good DIY wheel alignment.

[TominMO]

Just bought these toe plates, after looking at all the ones offered on Amazon. Seems to be the best design and quality. I expect it will pay for itself by doing other people's alignments for $10 - $20.

I considered whether it was worth my time to build something from big-box hardware store parts, and decided that whatever I built would probably not be as accurate nor as convenient to use. Plus buying the parts and two good tape measures would probably come to half this item's cost anyway.

[ryanprins13]

Just bought these toe plates, after looking at all the ones offered on Amazon. Seems to be the best design and quality. I expect it will pay for itself by doing other people's alignments for $10 - $20.

I considered whether it was worth my time to build something from big-box hardware store parts, and decided that whatever I built would probably not be as accurate nor as convenient to use. Plus buying the parts and two good tape measures would probably come to half this item's cost anyway.

Nice, i wish i had gotten that kind that goes off the rim instead of the rubber. Did you get the camber gauge that goes with it?

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[TominMO]

Nice, i wish i had gotten that kind that goes off the rim instead of the rubber. Did you get the camber gauge that goes with it?

Nah, I ain't no boy-racer type like Charlie..... ;-) Just getting toe-in right is good enough for my needs.

[Advancedynamix]

Camber is just as important as toe. If your camber us set evenly, you can run less toe in without the car pulling either direction. If you run less toe in, you get better gas milage, better traction in rainy and snowy conditions and less tire wear.
If you add negative camber you can enjoy more traction, more stability and better fuel milage. The stock alignment specs for a Festiva are ridiculous even to today's standards for street cars. Positive camber is only helpful when navigating rutted dirt or ice roads. If you are using your car as a garden tractor, or your driveway hasn't been maintained in 30 years and you live in Alaska, then you might consider leaving your camber at the stock spec. If you drive on asphalt (yes even crappy, pot holed, worn out asphalt) then a little negative camber goes a long way.

My theory is that the suspension on these cars was detuned from the factory. I've never driven a car where simply changing the shock valving (and aligning it properly) made such a big difference in the quality of the drive. I'm now getting replies from people on a regular basis who have set there cars up with more negative camber and less toe and they all strongly agree that the car feels so much more stable and planted, while being much easier to drive. Steering wheel input is lighter, and road noise is reduced.
The current "stance" craze has given a childish and ridiculous image to negative camber. I hear poeple tell me that they are afraid to run 2 degrees negative in fear of looking like a "tuner" car or "stanced". I have to laugh at this. My car has -5 degrees in the rear and you really have to look at it pretty hard to see the camber unless you are used to looking at chassis alignments all day.
Here is the rule of thumb with negative camber. 0 to -2 degrees looks factory. Many European cars come with -2 degrees stock. -2 to -5 degrees looks aggressive, like a sports car or race car. -5 degrees to -10 degrees looks like a stanced out car, -10 or more looks like those ridiculous cartoony cars that you are afraid of looking like.


This is what -3 in the front and -4.5 in the rear looks like. I took it out in the snow and mud to see if it was dangerous for you guys who live with this crap half the year. It was a pleasure to drive in the muck.

[TominMO]

Thanx 4 the tutorial. I'm guessing camber bolts for the lower strut mount would do the trick?

[TominMO]

Charlie, forgot to mention that I have '01 Rio front struts and top hats, with Festy front springs cut one coil. Does cutting coils tend to make the camber go more negative or more positive?

Also, which camber bolts do you recommend? I see Rock Auto has quite a selection for Festivas, and for some reason most brands have two options. Why? Some are described as single offset, some as double offset, but both types claim the same amount of change.

Why so some have a separate cam piece, and some have it as part of the bolt itself?

[Advancedynamix]

Lowering the car will provide negative camber to a point, but if you haven't lowered the car from stock, then simply cutting the springs won't affect camber. The location of the holes on the strut mount flanges could affect camber if they are different than a stock festiva strut. I have not personally set up a car with Rio struts (but I've driven a few) so I'm not sure exactly where the camber will be with that setup. I also have never used the camber adjustment bolts on a Festiva, so I'm not sure which works best.

[TominMO]

Slapped new tie rods on, AKA inner tie rods, so I had to do a new alignment. I used my homemade tool, a yardstick screwed to a 1" wide board for the proper length. Since it was a one-man job, a 90-degree bracket on the board end held it into a narrow groove on the tire, and a couple of bricks held that end in place in the groove. Then I measured to the same groove in the other tire, on both front and back sides, to get my readings.

It took a lot of fiddling to get it from 30mm toe-in (!) to 1mm, but that's where it sits. Took a while because I wasn't sure how many revolutions of the tie rod translated into each mm of movement. This was measured over only about 75 degrees of arc around the wheel. When I get my actual toe plates, I expect the toe-in to measure at ~3mm, or 1/8".

[TominMO]

Toe plates came yesterday (minor assembly required), so today I went out and checked the front and rear toe. Front was exactly straight, and rear was toed in 1/16" (factory stock I presume). It was by far the easiest, quickest, most convenient method of checking I have used.

I had noticed when driving the car with this setup that it had a harder time turning, not surprisingly. So I set the front toe to 1/8" total. This is with whatever camber the car currently has. Think I'm gonna order the camber measuring tool from the same company, and camber bolts to adjust front camber. Then maybe I can go more straight on the toe, as Charlie recommends.

BTW a 1/8" change is approx one full revolution of the tie rod.

For rear toe and camber, I can get some aluminum ducting from the hardware store and make some semi-circular plates to bolt on between the rear beam and the brake backing plate. They would go on the front and bottom studs, for toe-out (straight) and neg. camber respectively. Probably take two or three layers of the ducting. I'll have to play with the thicknesses and lengths to get the exact result I want--e.g. it might be two layers for toe, three for camber.

[ryanprins13]

Toe plates came yesterday (minor assembly required), so today I went out and checked the front and rear toe. Front was exactly straight, and rear was toed in 1/16" (factory stock I presume). It was by far the easiest, quickest, most convenient method of checking I have used.

I had noticed when driving the car with this setup that it had a harder time turning, not surprisingly. So I set the front toe to 1/8" total. This is with whatever camber the car currently has. Think I'm gonna order the camber measuring tool from the same company, and camber bolts to adjust front camber. Then maybe I can go more straight on the toe, as Charlie recommends.

BTW a 1/8" change is approx one full revolution of the tie rod.

For rear toe and camber, I can get some aluminum ducting from the hardware store and make some semi-circular plates to bolt on between the rear beam and the brake backing plate. They would go on the front and bottom studs, for toe-out (straight) and neg. camber respectively. Probably take two or three layers of the ducting. I'll have to play with the thicknesses and lengths to get the exact result I want--e.g. it might be two layers for toe, three for camber.

Thats a nice amount of toe in the rear, 1/8 in on the front is quite a bit, just a little makes a fair bit of difference.
Once you get the camber measureing tools and check the rear i can post a photo of the chart that came with my rear camber/toe shims. That will tell you what shim your could buy or with some math how thick to make the ducting shims. Would save you some trial and error.



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[TominMO]

Don't know if it was obvious or not, but the 1/8" front toe is the total for both sides, not 1/8" each side. Sorry for any confusion there.

I could take the front down to 1/16" total, and see how that handled. Had it up to 90 today with the 1/8" toe in, and it felt very planted. I'm guessing 1/16" would feel even better, at the expense of ease in turning.

So maybe 0 toe for a high speed course, and more toe-in for slaloms/autocross? Or run the same setup for everything, with 2.5 degrees neg camber? Charlie, your opinion on different setups for different applications.