A few people kept telling how easy it was to do my own wheel alignment. What the garage had set the car up as was not self centering and my IVA was tomorrow so I had to try and least get some sort of centering.
I measured the threads on each track rods so I could go back to what it was just incase I messed things up.
Then jumped on youtube and watched a few videos on how people perform the home alignment.
The theory is to run two guide lines down the sides of the car. You then make sure these are equal distances from the hub of each axle. You then measure the distance between the edge of the wheel to the line and this will well you if the wheel is toe in or two out.
So I had a little bit of toe in at the rears and a bit more at the fronts.
It had been recommended just for the IVA test to pump the tyres up to an extreme level, this reduces the contact patch with the road and makes the car easier to self center. The other area to help was to run extreme toe out.. Some forum posts suggest 3-4 degrees.
I had a good play around messing around with extreme toe out and the car did show signs of self centering. I was a little concerned about how the car would drive on the road as I had a 30 mile trip each way to the test centre. The first time I drive the car it was so scary driving it with extreme toe in.
I stumbled across the below website and its brilliant. Will be using it again for sure. You must run two parallel draw lines down the side of the car. These MUST be parallel to each other. They do not have to be parallel to the car as the calculations work this out.
Here are my final results.. This is as close as I could get the front wheels to being aligned in the time I had available.
For reference Cell K needs to be 2350mm and Cell I and J need to be 360mm if you are running 13" wheels. Never knew but if you measure the outer edge of a wheel rim this is bigger than the side its sold in, so mine are 13" wheels but the outer edge is large. For this calculator you need to use the outer edge.
At just over 2 degrees toe out on each side, I was a getting a little self centering. With more room and space I think we should see a good amount of self centering.
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