Motorsport Wheel Alignment: 5. Perform Alignment
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5. Perform Alignment
06.20
| 00:00 | - We're finally at the point in our example here where we can start making alignment changes to the car to get our alignment onto the specifications that we discussed in the introduction to our course. |
| 00:11 | Here we need to be mindful of the order in which we make our alignment changes as well. |
| 00:17 | As we've already discussed, if we're going to make any caster changes to the front of the car, we want to make these changes first and foremost as the caster will affect both the toe and the camber. |
| 00:27 | In this case, we already know that our caster is where we needed it to be at seven degrees so we're really faced here with making changes to our camber and then our toe. |
| 00:37 | We want to make those changes in that specific order. |
| 00:41 | This is because any time we affect our camber, this will change our toe, however the toe is not likely to make any significant changes to our camber in the Toyota 86 chassis. |
| 00:53 | With this in mind, we can start at the front of the car by adjusting our camber. |
| 00:57 | We already know that on the front right hand corner we needed to increase the camber a little bit to get to our 3.5 degrees, while on the front left we need to reduce the camber very slightly. |
| 01:08 | In order to make our camber changes, it's helpful if we just lift the car slightly to take the weight off the strut and this is going to allow us to more easily slide that camber adjustable top plate. |
| 01:19 | Once we've got the car jacked slightly and the weight off that strut, we can loosen the cap screws that hold the top hat into the chassis and then we can apply a little bit of force in order to make the camber change. |
| 01:31 | In this case on the front right hand side of the car, we're trying to increase the camber, so we need to tap the camber strut top towards the inside of the car. |
| 01:39 | Now I'm doing this here using the handle of a wooden hammer on the strut top and I'm just tapping this with another hammer. |
| 01:46 | Now this ensures that we're not doing to end up damaging our new struts. |
| 01:50 | Once we've made our change, we an tighten our cap screws back up, lower the car back onto the ground and then we can check our camber. |
| 01:58 | Before we check our camber though, it is important to make sure that our ride height is where we set it. |
| 02:05 | Quite often, we're going to find that when we drop the car back down onto the ground, the suspension will be bound up and we'll find that our ride height is sitting higher than normal. |
| 02:14 | Now in this case, we've fixed this by putting our turn plates under the front wheels and at the rear of the car, we've got our custom made slip plates. |
| 02:21 | However an alternative solution here, any time we jack the car off the ground and lower it back down, is simply to roll the car forwards and backwards a couple of metres and this will have the effect of setting our suspension. |
| 02:33 | Once we've got the car back on the ground and we've checked our ride height, we can then measure our camber. |
| 02:39 | This is normally an iterative process and it might take you two or three attempts to get onto your camber set point. |
| 02:45 | In this case, we've now got our camber set on our front right to 3.5 degrees negative and we'll repeat that process on the left hand side of the car. |
| 02:53 | Once we've got our camber at the front sorted out, we can move onto the rear. |
| 02:57 | And here we do need to understand what we need to actually adjust in order to make camber changes. |
| 03:03 | This can be affected by extending or shortening our rear lower control arms. |
| 03:09 | In this case because we haven't quite got enough negative camber, we're going to need to extend that lower control arm out or in other words, make it longer. |
| 03:17 | Due to the low ride height of the car, this is often easiest to achieve by jacking the car off the ground. |
| 03:24 | We can then make the necessary changes, drop the car back onto the ground and check our camber. |
| 03:29 | As with the front, we always want to check our ride height to make sure that the car has settled back down to the normal ride height before checking our camber. |
| 03:38 | Again, this can be an iterative process and it may take a couple of goes before you've got your camber where you want it to be. |
| 03:45 | Here we've adjusted our camber, we've now got the rear right at 2.5 degrees negative and we'll repeat this process on the left rear. |
| 03:52 | With our camber correctly set on all four corners of the car, the next process is to check and set our toe. |
| 04:00 | Now this is the same process we've already looked at using our strings and our ruler to measure our toe and then making the necessary adjustments. |
| 04:08 | At the front of the car, we're going to be adjusting our tie rods on our steering rack and by lengthening or shortening these, we can adjust our toe. |
| 04:16 | What this means is that extending the tie rod end will give us toe in, while reducing the length of the tie rod end will give us toe out. |
| 04:24 | On the rear of the Toyota 86, the situation is the exact opposite because this time, the toe control arm sits in front of the axle line. |
| 04:33 | What this means is that shortening the toe control arm will give us toe in and extending the toe control arm will give us toe out. |
| 04:41 | Now that we know which direction we're going to need to make our adjustments in order to get our toe where we want it, it's simply a case of moving around the car, making the necessary adjustments at each corner of the car, until our toe matches our specifications. |
| 04:56 | You'll remember that particularly at the rear of the car, we had way too much toe out with six millimetres per side, we needed to get this to one millimetre of toe in per side for a total of two millimetres toe in on the rear axle. |
| 05:10 | On the front left corner of the car, we had zero toe and on the front right we had four millimetres of toe out. |
| 05:16 | So it's just an iterative process of moving around, making those adjustments, until everything matches our specifications. |
| 05:23 | In particular at the front of the car, we do need to pay attention because if we aren't using slip plates or turn plates, we may find that as we adjust the toe on one side of the car, it actually has the effect of moving the steering wheel, if the steering isn't locked off. |
| 05:39 | We need to check this regularly and make sure that our steering is still pointing straight ahead. |
| 05:44 | Once we're happy with all of our settings, it's always a good idea to go through and just recheck that our strings are still square to the car. |
| 05:51 | This just insures that the strings haven't been bumped or moved during the process of our wheel alignment which would give us inaccurate results. |
| 05:59 | We also want to go through and recheck our camber at each corner of the car, just making sure that our toe changes haven't accidentally ended up making a camber change at the same time. |
| 06:11 | Once we're confident that our toe and our camber are where we want them to be, we can move on to the next step of the process. |
