How do I convert toe in degrees:minutes:seconds to millimeters or inches?

You didn't look very hard. Google.

those are numbers you use when you have the car on an alignment tool. even if you had the ability to determine front and rear toe, neither tell you thrust angle so you need the proper tooling.

ok, you shouldn't be touching this stuff. take the car to an experienced professional.

Need to know the diameter of your tires to figure it out.

Let's assume you have 235/45R17 (according to Tire Rack that was one of the two available tire sizes for your car)

so the nominal diameter of your tires is (235)(2)(0.45)(1/25.4) + 17 or about 25.3" (or you could look up the specs for the exact tire you're running on Tire Rack or the tire manufacturer's web site.)

so the toe in of each front tire would be 5 minutes or 5/60 degrees

so then the actual toe of one front tire in inches would be sin(5/60) *

25.3 = 0.037"

so your total toe, assuming you're using trammels and measuring the overall distance between the front and rear of the front tires at the center of the tread would be twice that or about 0.074"

rear done the same way would be 0.33" total toe

here's an online calculator that will do it for you

but you will need to figure out your tires' diameter if it is significantly different from what I posted above.

I am also ASSuming that the specs you gave are the normal type e.g. where you say 5 minutes +/- 10 minutes that that means each front wheel is toed in 5 minutes from the centerline of the car. The terminology "total toe spec" is a little confusing as that seems to imply that each wheel is toed in only 2.5 minutes? If the latter is the case, then halve the numbers given above.

nate

jim beam snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net wrote in news:krmeb7$re0$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

He didn`t say anything about doing it himself, he only asked for some info. So go stuff your worthless opinion where it belongs. (and your opinion of yourself is WAYYYYYYYYYYY above any reasonable one.) KB

all you need is a perfectly level garage floor and a trammel - or even a good tape measure and a helper - to set the front toe.

I would shy away from messing with the rear toe on a Bimmer because the rear suspension is kind of complex and you might end up screwing up one of the other adjustments at the same time, unless you know what you're doing.

nate

Just make the toe 1/8 inch wheel to wheel for both axles and you won't have to do any calculations.

Hi Jim Beam,

I appreciate your plug for the professional, and certainly they can accurately measure toe ... but I have to then ask:

Do you take your car to a car wash or wash it yourself? Do you repair your car or do you take it to a mechanic? Do you change your own oil or do you go to JiffyLube?

This is rec.autos.tech. It's the kind of question that could/should be asked on rec.autos.tech.

All I want to do is measure my front and rear toe. Measuring toe, in inches, should be relatively simple.

It's the distance from the center of the tire tread to the centerline of the vehicle.

What I want to know is how to convert that center-to-center measurement to the degrees that are listed in the shop manual.

How does this approach look for the conversion?

1. Total front toe = 0°5', so toe to center line is half that
2. Toe to centerline is 1/2 of 0°5' = 0°2.5'
3. 0°2.5' divided by 60' is ~0.0417 decimal degrees
4. 17" diameter rims * tangent ~0.0417° = 0.0124"
5. 0.0124" is roughly about 3/256ths" (or about 0.3mm)

Traditional way to do this is to measure from the center of the tire tread not the rim, because the measurement will be larger and therefore less prone to error. Hopefully your tires have a tread that makes identifying same easier (or at least one straight circumferential rib that you can use for a reference.) See my previous post for how to calculate it that way. I used sine not tangent because I'm considering the radius of the tire to be the hypotenuse (theoretically your measurements are going to be taken at right angles to the centerline of the car, or an imaginary line through the steering axis parallel to same) not at right angles to the tire centerline; but at these tiny angles sine and tangent are basically the same anyway so that makes no significant difference.

With measurements these small, if you're going for accuracy (that is, you're going to set it and drive the car, you're not asking because e.g. you just replaced the struts and are trying to do a driveway alignment to get you to the real shop) it is worthwhile to spin the wheels and observe that they aren't bent and that the tires don't have any lateral runout in them, because it's entirely possible to have a wobble that dwarfs a fraction of a millimeter but isn't perceptible while driving down the road.

I have my doubts that you can do a driveway alignment to plus/minus ten minutes, but you probably can get it close enough if you are careful that it will drive well and not wear the tires.

If you lift the car to spin the tires, after lowering it back down either bounce each corner several times to resettle the suspension, or drive it around the block before starting for the same reason. Bounce it again after making any adjustments, or make yourself some turn plates to position the car on before starting. (some pieces of sheet steel with grease between them would work fine.)

good luck

nate

actually, you need a wrench to set the toe - you need a tape to /measure/ it. well actually, you don't, because unless you know what you're doing, it'll get screwed up by tire imperfections, gravitational bow, etc.

you're such an idiot. "here be dragons" he bleats. granted, it's not a solid axle, but rear alignment is no harder than front. if you know what you're doing. which you clearly don't.

do you know what you don't know?

to do this job properly, you need proper tools. if you don't know the mm's per inch conversion, you're not a likely candidate for being able to handle this yourself.

doing it in mm is easier.

if the "manual" gives you c-t-c for the tire, you probably need a better manual. the tire center line is very imprecise, not only because of the rubber casting itself, but because different brands are all slightly different sizes. i'm sure you can figure out that tire diameter differences will give you toe angle differences.

you're going to have a real heard time accurately measuring that. 0.3mm is way smaller than the gravitational bow inaccuracy you'll get in a tape measure for instance. and on a modern low-slung car, your ability to get a "straight shot" measurement is practically zero.

again, the best way to do this job is on a modern alignment tool with the manufacturer angular specs - and a tool that can't be screwed up by operator error. older alignment tools relied on the wheel gauges being set right, and they rarely were. these days, with modern gear, even bent wheels don't matter.

[even i pay someone else to do this - i don't have the tools to do alignment accurately, and certainly not thrust angle, so i throw a few bucks at someone with a decent machine who does.]

as usual, you're a witless driveling retard. tire imperfections are of the same order as the entire adjustment here - you'll just compound the error.

typical - you've clearly never done this, what you should use is plates with bearing balls spread between, but hey, you never let knowing what you're talking about get in the way of spreading fabrication and idiocy all over the net.

he'll need it if he's reading your bovine effluent.

This is one time when I know that I know what I'm talking about and you don't. Oh, wait, that's all the time. Just changing the obvious twirly thing to change the toe on the front is safe and will work fine. There are several adjustments on the rear which will change both toe and camber when adjusted, so it may turn into an iterative process if the alignment is way out.

It's still possible to DIY, but requires more care and tools. Here's what looks like a fairly decent writeup.

Yeah, and on a used car, the runout on the bead surface of the rim - where your beloved professional alignment equipment is placed - could easily have 0.3mm of runout as well, if it's been driven in any of a number of cities with less than billiard-table smooth roads.

If a frog had a glass ass, he could only jump once.

No, the *right* tool for the job would be a set of premade turn plates.

But greased steel plates works just fine.

Bearing balls might work slightly better, but do you really want to be stepping on all the little steel balls you missed for the next two weeks until you finally pick/vacuum them all up?

Cite ONE - just ONE inaccuracy in anything that I posted above, you drooling retard.

You can't, because I do know what I'm talking about and you're just playing like you know what you're talking about because you're an insecure little shit who likes crapping on Usenet and making it a generally unpleasant place because of your mental issues.

OP, don't let JB run you off please...

nate

ygtbfsm - that's NOT complicated. clearly you've never done it.

oh, and you spewing some b.s. about what you say someone else says is just like your b.s. about staking marsden nuts - completely bogus idiocy.

clueless retard. you clearly don't know how a modern alignment machine works, let alone bother to watch it being used.

if you had a brain cell, you could... oh, wait, scratch that.

which is what you'd have if you used an alignment tool in the first place, retard.

no they don't - you've clearly never tried!

only if you're a retard. the rest of us put grease on the plates to hold the balls - they stay in place just fine. idiot.

??? i just have, retard. repeatedly.

"marsden nuts need to be staked" he bleats. "i can't find a picture of the tool that does it" he bleats. "i can't find a good explanation of how they work" he bleats. so i come along and cram your own inadequacy up your ass and you don't even have the sense to keep your retarded mouth shut about it. well, kiss my hairy yellow ass.

The problem is that the tire isn't very large, and the angle is very small, so a pretty miniscule difference in distance with the tape measure translates to a fairly large portion of the angle.

Do you care about the rim diameter or the full tire diameter? If you measure at the outer diameter of the tire, you have more lever arm to work with. But, tires are soft and flexible so your measurement is less accurate too.

Alignment _is_ a job for specialists, more than nearly anything else on the car. But, those specialists are becoming harder and harder to find and are being replaced by kids with automated machinery that can do the job just as well when everything is good, but often are totally useless when unusual conditions are encountered. So knowing something about the alignment geometry is a good thing just so you can make basic sanity checks.

--scott

+1 [checked all the boxes with that one.]

OK. That's wrong. When toe on a car is measured in degrees, it's the same figure whether you measure from rim to rim, or centre to rim.

Nate Nagel wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news6.newsguy.com:

I've had "jim beam" killfiled for at least a year; maybe more, I'm not sure now. I only see his posts when people like Nate respond to them.

For a long time I have/had been corresponding with "jim", both online and privately. Long ago, he gave me some great help and information for my website, help for which I am still grateful.

However, I do not know what has happened between 2005 and 2013. Either the

2005 "jim" was a different person than the 2013 "jim", or "jim" has gone quietly and steadily insane over the past eight years.

"jim", if you're the same person who helped me with the igniter section of may website, I have to ask: what has happened to you? I still have all the emails (I keep everything). Your tone of voice was very different before; much more...human.