In anticipation of changing my inner and outer tie rods, I needed a method to roughly set the toe afterwards (until I could take the car to a proper alignment shop.) I have used the string method in the past but find it tedious. My tires unfortunately don't have straight tread grooves to accommodate the tape measure method. I also didn't want to spend money on alignment plates since I do this so seldom.
Since I have access to a 3D printer, I decided to fabricate something on the cheap that will hopefully get things "close enough".
Besides the 3D printed parts, other bits required were one 8ft piece of 1" by 1" extruded aluminum. I originally was planing on using 2020 extruded aluminum as it would have made the T-joint between the aluminum pieces easier, but Home Depot Canada was selling the 1-by-1 aluminum extrusion at a very attractive price (cad$33), and a primary goal of the project was to do it on the cheap. The 8ft aluminium extrusion was cut into two 16" and two 32" segments.
The "knobs" on the 3D printed parts are eye bolts and cost around cad$0.86 a piece at my local HD. Other bits include 8/32 screws to fasten to black "feeler" posts to the black square slide blocks pictured above. Bungy cords were purchased from a local Dollarama for cad$5. Total cost for everything after tax was under cad$60. (I'm not factoring in the cost of the filament as I already had it on hand.)
The following photos are of the jigs assembled an mounted to the vehicle for testing fitment.
According to my DIY jig, the car is currently toe in by about 1 millimeter front to back over my jig length of approx 32 inches. Arctan(1.5mm/(32*25.4mm)) is about 0.1 degree. My car should have zero toe according the last pro alignment that was done over a year ago. So if this DIY jig can get things within 0.1 to 0.2 degree hopefully that is "close enough" to get me to the alignment shop.
We'll see how close it really is when I get around to changing those tie rods.
Since I have access to a 3D printer, I decided to fabricate something on the cheap that will hopefully get things "close enough".
Besides the 3D printed parts, other bits required were one 8ft piece of 1" by 1" extruded aluminum. I originally was planing on using 2020 extruded aluminum as it would have made the T-joint between the aluminum pieces easier, but Home Depot Canada was selling the 1-by-1 aluminum extrusion at a very attractive price (cad$33), and a primary goal of the project was to do it on the cheap. The 8ft aluminium extrusion was cut into two 16" and two 32" segments.
The "knobs" on the 3D printed parts are eye bolts and cost around cad$0.86 a piece at my local HD. Other bits include 8/32 screws to fasten to black "feeler" posts to the black square slide blocks pictured above. Bungy cords were purchased from a local Dollarama for cad$5. Total cost for everything after tax was under cad$60. (I'm not factoring in the cost of the filament as I already had it on hand.)
The following photos are of the jigs assembled an mounted to the vehicle for testing fitment.
According to my DIY jig, the car is currently toe in by about 1 millimeter front to back over my jig length of approx 32 inches. Arctan(1.5mm/(32*25.4mm)) is about 0.1 degree. My car should have zero toe according the last pro alignment that was done over a year ago. So if this DIY jig can get things within 0.1 to 0.2 degree hopefully that is "close enough" to get me to the alignment shop.
We'll see how close it really is when I get around to changing those tie rods.
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