Time to move on to alignment. A quick recap. I couldn’t find anyone locally that will do it, so I had to do it myself. That’s not really my thing, but you do what you have to do.

My tools are pretty basic. Just an antique bubble type caster/camber gauge, some rods and fishing line. 34_40 graciously offered to loan me a new digital gauge, which I really appreciate, but I thought I could get the old gauge to work OK if I could get it attached.

The problem with the magnetic gauge is that it is design to attach to an iron brake rotor or drum. Since there is no steel or iron on my front hubs to stick it to, I needed another way. I got around this on the initial setup during construction by temporarily fitting a cast iron rotor, but that would have been a real pain to do now. I doubt all that swapping would have given me a good reading, either.



I found a self-centering wheel clamp online that had a steel pad on it for this purpose. I can’t remember who made it, but that doesn’t matter because everyone that had them listed were sold out with no delivery date. That did get me to thinking though about the old wheel alignment machines that I had seen in the past. They all had similar clamps to hold their lights, lasers, mirrors or whatever in the center of the wheel. I did a little searching on EBAY and came up with a guy that had 2 old Hunter wheel clamps for sale for less than the price of the shiny new one that wasn’t available. It appeared to have a hole in the center, and I thought I might make that work. I took a chance and ordered them.

I was correct about the hole and made up a simple flange and spindle that just slips into the existing hole in the clamp. These were turned and faced in the lathe to insure they were square. They are made from a couple of old steel plates with 5/8 bolts for the spindle. The whole thing worked pretty well since the clamps are made for this. The old gauge seemed to work good too and the readings I was getting were repeatable. I actually didn’t need 2 of them, but it did make swapping sides easier and quicker.







I went through the whole alignment process before deciding that now was the time to get the car up on the scales and set the shocks and ride height. I know, I know…….that was a bad move. I should have done this first because it messed up the alignment and I had to go back and do it all over again.

The specs I started with was 6* positive caster on both sides, ½* of negative camber on both sides and 1/16” of toe-in. I wanted to take out some caster so I left the camber and toe the same, but lowered the caster to 3* positive. Actually, I have just between 2 ¾* and 3* on the right side (passenger) and a solid 3* on the left. I don’t know how this will drive yet, but it does have the positive effect of moving the wheels more to the center of the wheel well. That was one of those things that was bugging me.

The toe was set with fishing line strung between 2 square tubing bars supported by jack stands. Crude, but it must be effective, since both Formula 1 and NASCAR both use similar methods although with much more sophisticated setups. The rearend had been squared in the car during construction. I did a quick check and it was still square. Good thing too, since it would have been strange for it to have moved.





The front and rear bars were clamped together and the grooves were cut at the same time. That way the strings would always be parallel. Then it was just a matter of adjusting them to be true with the car and rearend.

I figured the actual measured amount of toe in a round-about way. I knew I wanted 1/16 toe in, but that is only 1/32 on each tire. Measuring that close to a tire is just about impossible, so I wanted to measure to the machined rim flange, but 1/32 at the rim flange would be more than that at the tire tread.

I found an online calculator that would convert toe in inches to degrees. Then I used another calculator that converted degrees to inches and simply input the diameter as 16.5 which is the outer diameter of the rim. This gave me about .019 at the rim flange. I’m sure I wound up with a little more than that, though. Very hard to measure that close to a fishing line! I’m sure I’ll have to tweak the steering wheel to center after I drive it. Still, it should be pretty close.