Camber Alignment tools advice

Hi,

I am new to the group and looking at buying tools for setting my track day car up myself in my garage. Therefore I don't have a perfect flat surface and I don't really want to spend a lot on buying tools/equipment I then have to store. My idea is to buy a square digital inclinometer, such as the Laser 6657 and this camber bar https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323613527149, I also already have these wheel dollies https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/182721272857 which just gives me enough access underneath to do adjustments plus they will act like slip plates.

For measuring camber, if I placed the inclinometer on the dolly and then zero it will this be close enough to get an accurate reading on the wheel using the camber bar, rather than having to try and pack out the floor to raise one of the dollies?

Am I correct in thinking if I plug my Diag tool into the OBD, I could then read the Steering Angle sensor to measure the 20 Deg so I can calculate castor?

I am also intending on buying a tyre pyrometer so that I can make sure my adjustments are optimised and not purely just guess work.

Thanks in advance for for any thoughts

Paul

Any ideas?

Hi Paul, I appreciate you wanting to do this on a budget however I'd have some pretty severe reservations about the results you'd get with the car on a set of dollies sadly. In the course we show how to setup a flat patch using very cheaply available flooring tiles and while it takes a little effort the first time around, you can then simply note down how many tiles are required and their respective positions for next time.

While yes, the dollies may act as slip plates, that would depend how freely they roll and I've seen vast differences in quality between brands. Slip plates can be very cheaply made from thin stainless plate and grease, or you can perform a roll out to settle the suspension prior to taking readings.

The digital gauge and bar would probably be totally workable for a camber gauge solution but I'd be a little apprehensive about how much I'd trust the steering angle from your OBD2 as an absolute wheel angle. it may instead be steering wheel angle instead.

Andre,

Thanks for the advice it's really appreciated.

My reasoning for wanting to use the dollies was to give me the height to work underneath the car to do the alignments, I was hoping they would also act as slip plates.

So if I follow the procedure using the tiles to level the area and make some slip plates, I could then have the dollies on top of the slip plates, unless there are other reasons why I shouldn't do this?

If the steering angle sensor is a no go, could I not use the string alignment tool with the strings a lot wider than normal, then use trigonometry to know how far the front of the tyre needs to move to get 20 & 40 degs?

Thanks

Paul