toe story

[juliemac57 at hotmail.com (Julie Macfarlane)]

Only others so afflicted COULD understand. Nice job.



Julie Macfarlane
Menlo Park Research & Development
Internet Application Developer
www.menloparkrandd.com
www.montgomeryweb.org
Amsterdam NY





>From: Wolfsbrg8v@aol.com
>To: scirocco-l@scirocco.org
>Subject: toe story
>Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 19:51:57 EDT
>
>
>Well being short of $ I decided to try and set the toe myself.
>As it turned out, the springloaded-shower-rod technique wouldn't
>work because there is not a straight shot under the car from the
>9 and 3 o'clock positions on one wheel to the other side .. various
>hardware in the way.
>
>So I reasoned that if I could drop a plumb line down from the
>front and back of each wheel, the difference between the front
>set of plumbs and the rear set would be the amount of toe over
>the span of the wheel.
>
>To get the plumb line I used a 15" triangle, one right edge set
>on the floor, held perpendicular to the wheel with a short bubble
>level against the side to keep it plumb. Holding a small wood
>block against the inside of the wheel lip at the 9 o'clock position
>(to offset for the tire bulge), I bumped the vertical edge of the
>triangle against the wood block and made a mark on the floor
>at the base of that edge.
>
>Did this for each wheel, then measured the distance between
>each set of marks, subtracted and got 5/8" of toe-out just over
>the span of the wheel ?!?  How the hell did it get THAT far out
>of whack ??  (No wonder the inside tire edges were balding.)
>I repeated these measurements four times, rolling the car
>a bit each time to account for possible wheel variations, and
>each time it was within a 32nd of 5/8".
>
>So, now to adjust.  Logic indicated that I should shorten each
>tie rod by 5/32" -- 1/2 x 1/2 x 5/8" -- and so I did, and what do
>you know! -- zero toe.  :)    I took 4 measurements, and I believe
>I've gotten it to within 1/32" despite the crude method.
>
>My scirocco corners and tracks MUCH better now. And plus,
>setting the toe properly also affected the camber, something
>I didn't expect.  Camber looks close to perfect now whereas
>before the adjustment it was visibly slightly negative.  Not sure
>about the geometry of that, but that's what happened.
>
>So that's my toe-in saga, doing this was real satisfying to
>say the least and besides, where else can I babble about this
>kind of stuff?   =)
>
>Leo
>
>
>
>
>
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