toe story

[Wolfsbrg8v at aol.com (Wolfsbrg8v@aol.com)]

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