MFE's Home Alignment:

The following instruction were written by MFE and found on Corral.net as a response to a post on C/C plates and tire wear.

Alignment Instructions:

First, the camber. I have 16-inch wheels. Using my carpenter's level placed against the bottom of the rim, and held so that it's vertical according to the level, I measure from the top of the rim to the edge of the level. This gives me inches from vertical on the top of the wheel.

Based on my calculations if the top of the wheel is 7/16 in from the bottom of the wheel I have about 1.5 degrees camber (for street). If it's 1 inch I have about 3.5 degrees (for autocross).

I base this on the fact that for the purposes of the camber "circle", the 16 inch rim gives a 32 inch diameter x pi (3.14159) = 100.5 inch circumference, so every "degree" is 100.5 / 360 or approximately 0.28 inches. I know this isn't perfect because the inches of inclination don't account for curvature of the circumference but it's close enough for government work. 1.5 degrees is 0.42 inches which is roughly 7/16 of an inch. 3.5 degrees is 0.98 inches. Call it one inch and call it a day.

Turns out I've been autocrossing at almost 4 degrees which is too much and when I open it out for the street I was running over 2 degrees. No big deal except for the effect it has on Toe.

I got a 6 foot rail of that shelving material with the slots cut in it, that you hook thick sheet metal brackets into for putting boards on top of. I hope this is making sense. I got one rail and two of the brackets, locked one on the rail and aligned it with a specific portion of the tire tread halfway up the back of the tire. I had marked measurements on the other end of the rail and with the second bracket I slid it along the rail until it met up with the corresponding portion of tire tread on that side of the car. Doing the same thing on the front of the tires I can measure total toe.

When I had the camber set at about 1.5 degrees, I got 1/16 inch toe in, PERFECT! Didn't even need to make an adjustment! Pretty damn good for the old stick-and-plumb-bob-across-the-tire method I used to use. But when the camber is at 3.5 degrees I get a shocking 3/8 toe out. Now I think that's fine for autocrossing and I knew toe was affected by camber but I was surprised at how much.

Anyway here's to pretty accurate home alignments, using tools most everyone has and $12 worth of stuff from the hardware store.

If you have 15 or 17 inch rims you can still use the 7/16 and 1 inch measurements to get you close to 1.5 and 3.5 degrees of camber respectively.