r3v'd my tires

[b*saint]

Replaced controls arms without doing an alignment. In a thousand miles I prob scrubbed off at least 10k miles of rubber. DAMN YOU BUSY CAREER! I went to go get an alignment on a Hunter machine. The guys couldnt do it because my car is lowered. What machine will align a lowered BMW? I have the BavAuto kit (their springs and bilsteins)

[gazellebeigem3]

thats bullshit.

[evil_twin]

bring some 2x4's so you can get it on the machine.

[mrsleeve]

the only thing they can adjust anyway is the toe, (unless you have upper camber plates) you can do that with a little card board on some salt or sand sprinkled on the cement floor, a tape measure and a 12mm wrench (IIRC) a set of dykes and 2 zip ties.

1) Pull the car on the cardboard with the salt or sand under it.
2) get under car remove the metal bands that hold the boots over the tie rods.
3) pick a spot on the front of the tire as high up as you can get on as close to the center line of the hub. Measure from that point on one tire to the same spot on the other tire. remember that.
4) Now measure from the same points on the same as high up on the tire as you can plane on the back side.
5) adjust with the adjustment nuts on the tie rods in our out till you have about 1/8 inch less reading on the tape in the front than the back.
6) roll the car back and forth and little bit or even go for a short drive an recheck and make sure you still have that same 1/8 differance front to back of the tire.
7)secure the tire rod boots with the zip ties, trim off the extra tie
8) profit

this really should take you no longer than 45mins total.

[mikeedler]

don't do that^
tires are too expensive- just spend the 40 dollars and have it alligned right-- and yep, that is BS- any machine can align your car- reguardless of how low it is-- it goes into the "spoiler program".

[E30Nova]

Was the technician fat?

Matt

[b*saint]

Pete's in Webster, MA

[bzboardz]

Iv have 2 shops turn me down for an alignment, had to go to a shop that did higher end cars that where used to dealing with cars being lowered. I'm sure any shop can do it just a matter if they want to spend the extra time

[Wh33lhop]

don't do that^
tires are too expensive- just spend the 40 dollars and have it alligned right-- and yep, that is BS- any machine can align your car- reguardless of how low it is-- it goes into the "spoiler program".

Not necessarily. We tried to align my old car at my friend's shop and the crossmember (FWD car, transverse engine) was too low. For some machines, the wheel sensors need to be able to "see" each other under the body of your car. If there's no line of sight between the sensors due to your car being too low, it won't be able to give you any numbers.

[Hick]

string aligments are easy and work just fine for e30s. ive done three this way...they all track perfectly and dont eat tires.

[evil_twin]

I don't understand mrsleeves way of doing camber... but the string way and tape measure work. I have that done on my e30 right now.

[Wh33lhop]

Mrsleeve didn't post a method for camber, only for toe.

string aligments are easy and work just fine for e30s. ive done three this way...they all track perfectly and dont eat tires.

I want to try this but I'm skeptical regarding accuracy. I also tried to find F/R track width of an E30 to no avail. I also need to do caster though, which is beyond the scope of home alignments.

[E30Nova]

I wouldn't really worry about it being inaccurate. Someone on another forum aligned his car with string and/or a tape measure (forget exactly what he used) and then he drove it to an alignment shop. They said it was damn near perfect.

Matt

[Wh33lhop]

I wouldn't really worry about it being inaccurate. Someone on another forum aligned his car with string and/or a tape measure (forget exactly what he used) and then he drove it to an alignment shop. They said it was damn near perfect.

Matt

I'd probably trust toe plates, but a string method without knowing the track difference F/R I'd be a little suspect of.

[ak-]

Didn't read all of the replies, but I was turned down before for the same reason.