DIY Tech: Setting Toe at Home

Sometimes, you need to do things on the cheap and that requires you to do things yourself. Whenever you do something to affect the toe of the front wheels you need to set it again and you may think that you have to do that at a shop. Not so fast! We’ll show you how you can do it from home with a pair of jack stands, string, linoleum squares, and a tape measure. Suddenly, that need for a shop has been reduced.

First thing you want to do is make your floor level. Now, obviously you can’t really do that without grinding down your surface, so there is a solution to that. Go get some linoleum squares from your home box store and be sure to get several. Mark off where your tires will be when you want to do your alignment with some chalk. Now, find a bucket and fill it with water and tape it into the bucket. You’ll take the other end and siphon it like you would if you needed to, uh, “borrow” gas from your neighbor’s Camaro.

Once you have water inside the tubing, take a yardstick and the tubing with the water in it to each spot a tire would be. Add a square to each spot until all four spots read the same by looking at the meniscus (the curve-shaped water surface) and the line on the yardstick you are basing level on. After determining level, put some salt under the linoleum squares with the smooth side facing down and the paper side up in order to allow the suspension to settle and the wheels to move as you adjust your toe.

Now, grab a pair of jack stands and some string that you can easily see against the ground, car, and tape measure. Place the jack stands on both ends of the car placed a few inches away from the body so that the string isn’t affected by the body or tires. Make a loop on one end of the string and place it on one jack stand, and then loop the other end around the other stand. Take your tape measure and measure the height of the string against the wheel centers, and make sure it measures the same front to rear. With everything the same, you’ll be ready to measure your toe.

Take your tape measure and place it on the front of the wheel. It is preferred to measure from the wheel rather than the tire as it will not be affected by the deflection of the rubber tire. Measure both in front of and behind the center of the wheel and subtract the difference. That difference is your toe and you can come up with a negative number; that will be “toe out”. Positive toe will be “toe in”. This is where you’ll need to grab your manufacturer’s manual to get the correct settings for toe. If they read out in degrees, you can convert that into inches here.

Set your toe and be happy that you no longer need a specialized shop to do this anymore.

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