elripster

I have described this before but am now including pics. This assumes you have just installed spacers and your alignment is jacked. If you just need to "touch" up your alignment, this process gets very short.

First off lets assume your alignment was fairly close when you started. This is good because the relation between an a-arms front cam bolt will remain fairly close, i.e., the rear cam bolt will typically be turned outwards more than the front and you want to maintain that. This will maintain negative caster.

Step 1) Set your ride height. There are loads of posts on t-bar adjusting so I won't go into that here.

Place a square next to the tire and adjust the cam bolts until it is vertical or very slightly leaning outwards. Slightly is .125" gap. I usually go for vertical, it is easily attained. You can adjust these with the truck on the ground but need to roll it back and forth to relax the suspension after adjusting. You can straight nail the camber with this method.



Pictures of the symmetry you are after from front and rear views.




Now adjust the toe. You can tape the string to the tire or tie it to the tow hooks. I actually prefer the tow hooks but took these when I first did it taping the string to the front tire.



Measure the gap between BOTH of the sides of the rear tires. The front tires should be square to the rear tires or slightly toed in. Max difference should be < .125". In fact, you should align the front tires to the rear tires dead on. If you can visually see toe in, you have too much. Again, roll the truck back and forth after adjusting taking care to keep the wheel pointing straight. This will do an excellent job of centering the wheel. With such a long radius running the string all the way back like this, you have a lot or resolution for measurement. It is very easy to accurately get the front tires square.



Recheck your ride height. When you set it the first time, the misalignment could have been (and probably was) causing the suspension to bind so make sure it is where you like and the truck is level. If you are really anal, fuel tank level will change the left/right tilting of the truck so set the height with .5 tank.

At this point your alignment should be pretty darn close. If you are feeling a bit overwhelmed or unsure, hit up the alignment shop. You are so close even the most brain dead alignment tech will have no problems with your truck. If you are enjoying the prospects of saving more dough do the final touching up which is to take a test drive and repeat the process but this time you will make much less dramatic adjustments.

If you did not adjust the height, the camber will still be where you left it. If you did, readjust the camber.

If you readjust the camber, you will need to reset the toe.

I am often asked how to set the caster within the 2 degree (leaning rearwards) spec. Truth, I don't know. I have been doing this for years and simply set both leaning rearwards because cross caster is what is more important. Don't have one spindle leaning forwards and the other rear. I had a shop do exactly that an the truck felt very "nervous". As long as the spindles are leaning rearwards, your steering wheel will return to center like it should.

I have no adverse tire wear and my truck drives straighter after I align it than it EVER has after getting it out of a shop. I was absolutely shocked on my first test drive because it was so stable with so little pull compared to when I took it in to get aligned.

When a truck is first lifted, that first alignment can take an hour. After that, though, those little touch ups IFS requires after wheeling will be a 15 minute job. At 50 bucks a pop, thats $200 saved and $200 an hour if you align your own truck after 4 hard wheeling trips.

Frank

mudbutt

This method will only work if your front and rear track widths are the same. If they are not you will have a extream amount of toe in/out. Also Caster will be tough to get, even perfect front ends will not be symmetrical. Camber sould be close to dead on given the floor/surface is perfect.

Is that an old RD400 in the picture?

rdlsz24

Sweet I will have to give this a try. I have tires sitting in my garage waiting to be installed and then will do it.

Edit: Quick question. Will I be able to tell which bolts to adjust just by looking at them? I consider myself mechanically inclined

Rob

elripster

This method works regardless of track width. You are looking for a difference between the sides of the rear tire. (checking for parallel) If the string is farther from the rearward side of the rear tire than the forward side, you have toe in. Run a string back you can see real time what I mean.

Concrete will level itself due to surface tension. Unless trees are lifting/tilting it or you are near a drain, you are good to go. If you are worried about your concrete, check the tire in more than one spot.

Actually, that's a '74 Kawasaki S1 two stroke triple I have been wanting to restore for years.

Frank

elripster

I think you will. You only have the lower a-arm cam bolts and tie rod end adjusters. When you turn them you can easily see how the tire's orientation is affected.

Frank

mt_goat

Thanks Frank, I've had bad luck getting the alignment shop to adjust my camber to zero. As long as its within spec they don't want to touch it but I can tell by eyeballing it it's not straight. I'm going to set it myself now.

mt_goat

I can see how to do the camber ok, but you're losing me on the toe part of the instructions. Where have you expained that before, in more detail maybe? You're measuring the gap on the sides of rear tires? Seems like it should be the front, no?

mt_goat

Wow, your rear cam adjusters are maxed out there.

rdlsz24

That seems like the way it should be to me too. I know my rears are pointing straight ahead, so I would want to line up my fronts with those correct?

Rob

mudbutt

I use straight edge(yard stick) taped to the tire. Then measure the difference between the front and rear(of the fron tires) of the straight edge. The string method works great to center the steering wheel but I don't get how toe is correct with it. If your rear axle is narrower or wider then the front then the string method will give you excessive toe. If you used both you could use the straight edge and string to get correct toe and a straight steering wheel.

Caster could be matched using plumb bobs over each ball joint(upper and lower), then measuring the difference between the two.

mudbutt

Oh Yea, caster is very hard to get into spec on a lifted yota. Most lift the rear more and that decreases caster. I had to lower the rear of my runner to get it to track straight and have correct caster

mt_goat

Ok, thanks. How do you adjust caster on an IFS anyway?

nmtoy

Thanks for the info Frank, very helpful!

Robb

elripster

Yep.

Frank

elripster

My cams were maxed out because my truck was badly stink bugg'd. After I had gotten it back from it's first unscheduled vacation (stolen) it was missing the spare, bumper, roll bar, speakers, etc... so was sitting high in the rear.

I wouldn't max out like that on a level truck. Turn 'em to like 2 o'clock. Or just take a look at where the rear facing cams are compared to the front and try to maintain that relationship. Again, don't get undie-bunched over the caster, just make sure it leans back and both sides are fairly symmetric. (assuming your truck is level and not all bent up under there)

If a truck is not tracking straight, meaning not returning to center, there isn't enough caster. To much will make it return to center more. It's much like on a motorcycle where sportbikes having minimal rake are very responsive (twitchy, turn easily) while cruisers with more rake just wanna go straight and don't respond nearly as well to handle bar input.

I should clarify: Take a string like shown and bring it in towards the rear tire. When it touches the front surfaces, stop swinging it inwards, you now have the direction the front is pointing and can compare it to the rear.

Frank

Robrt32

There are some rednecks up from me, that build a diffrent truck every week, while sucking down Bush beer and they don't use anything but a 12 foot tape mesure to align there front ends . They get it close enough to where there tires don't wear uneven.. I thought that was pretty cool

elripster

I should also add that excessive toe in or out will make the truck "twitchy". It will tend to follow uneven rain grooves and such.

Frank

AxleIke

so with the string, i'd be looking for the string to be just touching both edges of the rear tire, and both edges of the front tire...I'm still confused on that part.

ewong

Its in the pic...

The lower A arm has TWO adjusting points; front and rear

By varying these (front / rear) the caster and camber can be affected.

Most people can figure out that if they dial BOTH the front and rear "out" (that is the hole is on the cam is on the "in" side) that you have effectivley "lengthend" the lower A arm and thus increase the "negative" camber.

What people dont realize is that the dialing the rear cam "in" and the front cam "out" you add caster...

I could never get one alignment shop to understand that...

FredTJ

Here's a much easier way to adjust the toe.

- First, jack the front up so that both front wheels are slightly off the ground and will turn freely (you can do this one wheel at a time).

- Take a spray can of paint and as your helper turns the front tire, paint a strip on the tire, roughly in the middle of the tread.

- Do this to both front tires.

- Now (you can also do this one tire at a time), take a bucket or really anything that you can set in front of tire and do just that, set the bucket (upside down) right in front of the tire, just a hair from touching it when your helper turns the tire.

- Take a screwdriver (or anything that will produce a thin line) and holding it such that the blade is vertical (up and down) have your helper turn the tire while you, resting the screwdriver on the bucket, score a line in the paint strip on the tire. Got how this is done ? Helper turns the tire, you, holding the screwdriver (or whatever) on the bucket such that it won't move, lightly let it score a fine line on the paint strip. It doesn't matter if it's not perfectly centered on the tread.

- Do the same for the other tire.

- Let the vehicle down off the jacks.

- Using the bucket (two of them, so that you're measuring the same height at the front and the rear of the tire), have you helper hold one end of the tape measure on the line at the front of one of the tires and you hold the other end of the tape measure and check the distance between the line of the front of the tires.

- Move the buckets to the rear of the tire and measure that distance.

- This in your toe, either in or out.

This takes longer to explain that it actually does to do.

Basically what we're doing is creating a relatively fine line around both the front tires, sort of in the center of the tread, but it doesn't matter if it's 100% centered or not, as long as it's in the same spot all the way around the tire. By holding something (like the edge of a small screwdriver blade) braced against say a bucket, then the blade will score a line in the paint by the tire spinning.


Here's a picture (not of a Toyota, but it doesn't matter) of one of the front tires, several days after we set the toe on it. We used "Ford Light Blue" paint that I had around the shop and the paint has already been worn off the tread blocks themselves, but this is just so y'all can maybe visualize what I'm talking about:




If anyone can't visualize this I can probably take a couple of photos to demostrate, but it's really easy to do and this way there's no string to mess with, no worries about any difference in front and rear track width, etc.



Fred