easy way of squaring / stringing up front wheels

[pad4]

Just put a new steering column in the car and track rod ends on it resulting in the front wheels both slightly in need of tracking (steering wheel is on straight as a die) , Just need a quick way to get them both pointing straight forwards until i can get it in for tracking.

Can i do this with string round the car ??? or is there any other quick ways.

PD

[InimiaD]

Do you know anyone who's got a Trackrite gauge.?
They are fairly accurate for getting the tracking sorted.

[pad4]

ive been looking at those....
do they actually work then?

i can use my iphone clinometer to set the camber
trackrite to set the tracking and jobs done almost

[coop12g295]

Trackrite works I've done a few minis and my volvo.

[andy1071]

If you only want a quick-and-dirty temporary fix, why not just line them up suare to the body side?
-It'll be close enough to get you to the tyre place

[nick@dunsdale]

If you only want a quick-and-dirty temporary fix, why not just line them up suare to the body side?
-It'll be close enough to get you to the tyre place

Yep that works, all you need is a longish straight edge set them parallel to the car body will get you going till tracked

[2ramp3]

The most accurate inaccurate way to track your steering is simply jack up your car and measure the distance across the edge of the wheel rims at the back and then repeat at the front then adjust track till measurement is same for both readings .but i would,nt bet a set of tyres on jt

[JanWulf]

Easy. Put some pieces of wood in front of the rear wheels, to make the rear track just as wide (or a little wider) than the front track. Then put a piece of string around all 4 wheels and adjust the track rods so that the rear edge of the front wheels is about 1.5-2mm away from the string.

The steering rack should have a little plastic grub screw which is accessable from the passenger's foot well (rubber grommet). If you unscrew that, you can center & fix the steering rack with a drill bit (6 or 8mm - can't recall right now). At least the later steering racks have that... Don't know about the early ones?

The blue lines show what I tried to describe:



The red lines are a second string I used to determine the actuall tracking. But this has to be done only once. Note the thickness of the spacers for the rear and note the distance blue string/wheel - and you can repeat it any time with just one string.

I used two different strings, as with only the red string I would not have had any mean of similar/centered adjustment for BOTH wheels. With those two strings & a centered rack the steering is accuretaly and 100% centered. The lenght of the red string was about 6m - the longer, the more accurate. And as I said, the red one needs to be used only once to get an accurate reading.

But as you are going to have the track adjusted anyway, you don't need the red string (was just explaning the drawing there) But it is a surprisingly accurate method - I myself will not spend anymore money to have someone else do the tracking with a computerised piece of string

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Jan