I was told by someone that I could do this myself... Is this true? If so how because my car always veers off to the left and I have to hold the wheel just a tad to the right to keep it going straight...

 

do it old school style, tie a fishing line all the way around all 4 tires, at an even height and put the wheel strait and you can see how much it will be off, then tighten the tie rod ends till the gap between string and tire is filled. not the best allingment tool but it worked for me.

 

I don't think you can do a front end alignment yourself unless you have an alignment rack at home

unless your friend is suggesting you try some Flintstone style amnesia cure to re-align your front end

 

Is there any abnormal tire wear ? If not, you might want to try to rotate your tires from front to rear if it has been a while. It may just be some tire pull, I have worked at several dealerships and a lot of times thats all it is.

 

wtf? You can't be serious

 

Beleive it or not, I've seen it done like that aswell....

 

don't try to align it yourself, it'll take forever and never be perfect.

 

Ditto that.

If you care about your car, your tires and the way your car drives, I'd let a shop do that. 50-70 bucks well spent.

TS

 

And you actually don't want the tires perfectly straight, and all that

 

FWIW, the firestone by where i am has a 1 time alignment for 60 bucks...or lifetime alignments for 129...i went ahead and got the lifetime one. cant beat the price, itll pay for itself after the next time i go in. and the lady said i could go in as much as i wanted, everyday i can get an alignment, if i so choose

 

does that apply to all of your cars.. or only the first one you align?

 

i think only the one you align. but the roads in norfolk suck, so im sure ill be back mulitple times. and its natiowide too.

 

They should LOVE you,

 

All you guys are just letting the fancy-looking expensive machine distract you from understanding just what alignment is. In simplest terms, it's the ability to measure (or compute) three angles. Plus the ability to adjust them to where you want them. And you'll need an area that's at least flat or can be made flat by shimming flat panels of whatever under any low corners. Flat and perfectly level is better yet, but not absolutely necessary as long as you know how far out of level it is.

Let me stress the part about where you want them. Once you have some understanding about alignment you may find that there's plenty of reason for not keeping it set to the factory's preferred settings. Maybe not even within the factory ranges. Very few shops will do that for you, the most common exception being that you're a personal friend of the alignment tech and he knows that you understand what you're after.

It is NOT computerized rocket science (the fancy machines mostly make it do-able in a length of time that's profitable for the shop, part of which comes from not having the tech having to stop wrenching on the adjustments and remeasure/redo the math to see where his settings are).

Yes, it will take you longer, though the time difference may not be all that much after you add travel time to and from the shop plus time spent in the waiting room before the car is driven onto the rack. But there are at least 3 separate write-ups on DIY alignment that I know of just OTOMH. Four, if you count the one in a recent issue of Hot Rod Magazine.

A word about cost. Over the roughly 25 years that I've been doing my own alignments I have barely $30 tied up in equipment that I didn't already have for other reasons. A flat concrete driveway, a carpenter's combination square with a little bubble level in it, a small scale that reads to 1/64" and 0.01" (it's do-able if it only reads to 1/32"), four jackstands, and two lengths of string) was all I used for many years, and I've never had any unusual tire wear. The homebuilt caster-camber gauge that I'm using now works with a dial indicator and is good within plus or minus 0.02* or so.

Norm

 

Can you give us a guide on how exactly you do your alignment. I did some suspension work and my alignment was way off. I got it very close by myself.