Rear wheel alignment.

Take it to a place that does tracking and part with £30.

Can't I just do it myself? How hard can it be?

How many tyres can you afford? It will still be cheaper than buying the proper alignment gear.

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Can't I just do it myself? How hard can it be?

you wont do it without the proper tracking equipment, im not sure how you changed your bushes, but you dont have to take the arm off the car to do them, you can do thme in situu, we've done a few fair of them as its quite a common thing on Rovers & Hondas, but we always mark the exact place the adjustable mounting bolt comes from, so when refitted there is no need to re-track & have never had too either.

Have you a full set of tracking gauges and a perfectly flat area to do it on?

Yes, unfortunately when I called up Rover and one other local garage for a quote they told me the arms had to come off and quoted a huge sum of cash.

So when I did them I just assumed the swing arms did have to come off and took them to an engineering place to press them in/out. He looked at me in amazement and pointed out they could be done in situ in 20 mins....

So you'll understand why I'm reluctant to let a garage touch the tracking on my car - if Rover don't know how to replace bushes of Rovers I'd say my chances of getting tracking done better by a garage than I can do it with a bit of string are zilch.

Why is alignment on cars so hard? You can do it on a bike in 5 mins. WHat's the difference?

No tracking gauges. That's why I'm asking for practical ways to do it in my driveway.

In which case the practical way is to pay your £25 and find a garage that does 4 wheel tracking. If you really want to do it yourself you will need to get a full set of gauges which are not cheap.

A specialist equipped with a 4 wheel alignment rig would likely adjust it for you.

the difference being is the the two extra wheels a car has.

Front tracking is just difference in distance between front and rear rims - steel rule to measure gap between rim and end of a trammel bar made from pipe and elbow fittings works fine . The steering will centre up any error in left and right track, so car still goes straight but with steering wheel offset. Eliminate that by moving both nuts the same amount so track rod ends move in same direction on both sides.

Rear is hard as it has to be set evenly to the car centre line. Finding the car centre line without a proper tracking kit (just put normal front wheel kit on back to front, + is - and - is +) usually means lots of messing around with strings and long boards to find centre line from front wheels. Even messier if you have to allow for different front and rear track width.

?t=18606and the thread that's linked off that one, does camber too and goes onto diy trammel bar - appears strip of wood and shelf brackets worksfor less than £10? Poundland sprit level and maybe brackets £2, stripof wood and maybe brackets - find a skip. Tyre shops are crap. I had a BX, one rear arm bearing went. The tyre scrubbed out. Had it replaced. Couldn't get the car to run straight, had it re-tracked. Still not straight, went back again and again. New tyre scrubbed out in 2 months. They were quite willing to put the steering wheel on one spline further round but tell me the swing arm bearing was duff - no, just keep on selling tyres until MOT test found it.

So you've no tracking guages but want to manage to magically figure out a way of checking the angle of the rear wheels to the front and each axle from side to side to an accuracy of 0.5mm with wheels, when tracked, point inwards and not directly parallel. You DO know car wheels toe in or out at the front at standstill?

And all of this to save £25.

Very good. Now are you sure what adjustments you make will also result in the correct toe in or out for each axle?

Mine don't. Well, they do at the moment as I paid 25 quid for someone to use the wrong size spanner and then give up when winding the track rods round enough got tough. But my wheels *shouldn't* have any toe in or out at standstill.

Yet another job I wish I had my own equipment for, so I didn't have to use spanner monkeys.

One of the local tyre places uses a wheel scrub gauge (Gunsons do the 'Trakrite' for £60) and sets everything to straight ahead (0 degrees) regardless. Makes the steering feel lighter, but other than that has no ill effects that I could find...

I've been looking at those, but before investing I could do with finding a flat enough straight enough bit of driveway!

Well I could as I have a HND in Mech Eng and can do the 'GCSE' Maths A or A* level trig standing on my head.

If so then why the f*ck you asking us then instead of getting on with it?