alignment tools

[Norm Peterson]

I don't know of any alignment tools for 300 that will get you close to the good enough laser alignments at the shops.

The 0.1° resolution that you get with a $40 Harbor Freight digital angle finder is less than what the difference of adding a single 1/64" shim to each stack represents in terms of what you can actually set. There is little benefit in improving the precision of the measuring apparutus much beyond the resolution that exists in the adjustment.

But if you have some other adjustment mechanism and 0.1° is still too coarse, it's not that hard to fabricate a guage that works with a dial indicator and get pretty close to 0.01° resolution.

"Good enough" includes more than just the potential accuracy and resolution of the measuring equipment itself. It also includes the care with which the shop tech goes about doing the job. Care in performing the setup affects the results, regardless of who's doing it, or where. Heads and targets get dropped or don't get mounted quite perfectly (perhaps because the tech is in a hurry), unequal tire inflation is sometimes overlooked. I've even seen a dealership shop tech start to jack up the rear of a late-model F-body that was on the alignment rack by its panhard bar. Sloppy setup and sloppy work usually makes for sloppy results.

If you know what it is that you're measuring, what the potential sources of error might be (and how to work around them), you can work pretty closely with unglamorous equipment. Just takes a bit longer.


Norm