Gunson Trakrite

It looks good do they really give reliable repeatable usable results?

Thanks

the one I bought new was rubbish, I gave it away. You can get very accurate results with two suitable straight boards, notched to fit your wheels and only touching on straight wheel rim, plus two helpers to hold them and a steel tape or even a bit of string to measure between the boards at two points. or buy a dunlop tracking gauge secondhand off ebay.

Still have my home-made one, used to work at a garage that would change track rod ends counting threads and change wishbones with no tracking check. Does wonders for tyre sales. Rog

Think I might try driving over a piece of A3 size paper placed on a thin, smooth, no buckling aluminium sheet. I expect one of the following might happen:

1. Due to the weight of the car and smoothness of the aluminium, if the toeing is out the paper with twist (rotate) a few degrees. The direction of rotation will indicate under / over toe.
2. The paper may not rotate due to friction between paper and aluminium (even though toeing may be out) but in this case you would see smudging of the tyre block pattern imprinted on the paper. Smudging would be greater either on the inner or outer (left or right) side of the imprinted tyre block pattern. This would indicate under / over toe.

May be use a rag with some tyre blacking rubbed over the entire tread to show the smudge more clearly.

Think I might try driving over a piece of A3 size paper placed on a thin, smooth, no buckling aluminium sheet. I expect one of the following might happen:

1. Due to the weight of the car and smoothness of the aluminium, if the toeing is out the paper with twist (rotate) a few degrees. The direction of rotation will indicate under / over toe.
2. The paper may not rotate due to friction between paper and aluminium (even though toeing may be out) but in this case you would see smudging of the tyre block pattern imprinted on the paper. Smudging would be greater either on the inner or outer (left or right) side of the imprinted tyre block pattern. This would indicate under / over toe.

May be use a rag with some tyre blacking rubbed over the entire tread to show the smudge more clearly.

the only caveat is that the squirminess of the tyre will distort the results, over inflating the tyres would help. you could also just make up a 'grease plate' (two sheets of metal with grease between) mark the edges, gently drive onto the plate to the middle and any deviation will show which way the wheel is trying to go. same principal as the trackrite (and its proper forefather, which I now have and use) but more solid (which was the main problem with the trackrite, it just was not solidly enough constructed to do the job)

I had vaguely considered one of these

although I suspect I'll probably manufacture something. Could really do with 4 wheel alignment for the mr2.