I will be doing some work on my car this winter including upgrading my brakes and changing some suspension parts and I would like to try aligning my car myself. I have done toe adjustments with just a tape measure and it worked out fine. Anyone have experience with any of the diy alignment kits?

I have the speedway motors low cost caster camber gauge and some gil smith turn plates. I use string, conduit, and jack stands for toe. I had great luck with these but I'll have to buy a wheel mount caster-camber gauge the next time because I won't be able to stick the speedway caster camber gauge to the hubs anymore.

Aligning an A-body with wide front tires on your garage floor is tricky because you are basically at arm's length under the car the entire time you are making adjustments.

Last time I had an alignment done I was able to watch the tech do the work and it did seem a bit tricky to reach in over the tires and make the adjustments. I wonder if putting jack stands under the lower control arms would do the trick and then just use steel rims without tires to set caster and camber? My thought is that with a stock suspension I would want be trying to get the most positive caster and as much negative camber as I could get which based on my last alignment is about 0 degrees for each.

I aligned my Dart myself with help of an app on my iPhone.

There's no good reason you'd want 'as much negative camber'.

A-bodys are a pain to align yourself because the cam bolts are pretty much inaccessible behind the wheel. But I got the job done relatively fine.

I wouldn't do that at all. Ride height and settled suspension is very important for doing it correctly. You'd need turn plates or at least some steel plates with grease in between them to do the caster correctly as well.

I have 7 deg positive caster and -3/4 deg camber with hotchkis UCAs. It's a good street setup. also 1/16" per side to in.

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbt...mendations.html

These pics were just part of the setup phase. When we did the actual alignment we used greased plates.

I use the QuickTrick stuff.

http://www.quicktrickalignment.com/

Hitman
Smart Camber
Some manufacture's old shop bubble gage
Giant caliper style Toe-gage (Probably from JC Whitney)

Plus
- the ole eyeball three points sanity check method.
- Strings and tape measure for toe
- carpenter's level and square for rough camber

Looking down the tires (above the bulge) is always good for just seeing if it looks right. Remember the rear track is different than the front.

The giant calipers are quick to use. Body and chassis can get in the way especially trying to get higher up on the tire.

String and tape measure are still a great way to get toe. Measure from the rim when possible. Usually its more consistant than the tire. If using the tread, marking the center all the way around with chalk or similar helps accuracy.

Hitman was a neat idea but requires a flat surface for 25 feet or so. That is you need to be able to back up the car 20 feet or so and aim the scopes. It uses the hub for magnetic mounting. So it means removing the hubcaps and the dust caps, and then still might have interference with a 4" on 5 bolt circle. Bubble gages with the kit were OK, but not great.

Real Bubble Gage Still my personal favorite to use. Can't recommend a specific brand as I was using someone elses.

Smart Camber Pretty good to use. Reads only to tenths. Fairly quick. Uses three contact points on the rim, and depending on the distance from rim to fender longer contacts are helpful. They have a Toe measureing add-on but I haven't used it. Being digital you can zero out floor slope.

While real toe plates are the best, you can get by with slip plates. The slip plates can also be used as shims to level the front or front and rear if the floor is close but not quite level.

Thanks for the replies. I downloaded a couple of the iPhone apps and have been playing around with it a bit. They are only a couple bucks so depending if I like them or not I might try another of the traditional alignment tools.

I used iAlign at first and later on CamberMeas, which has a handy function that you can enter your steeringbox ratio, and just turn the steeringwheel a certain amount left and right to do caster adjustment.

https://itunes.apple.com/bj/app/cambermeas/id909887950?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ialign/id334573404?mt=8

No you cannot have a jack stand under the LCA. The weight needs to be on the tires to read the specs correctly.

I went with a "Deco" magnetic caster/camber gauge #91082605 from Speedway - $120. Believe you can buy an adaptor for aluminum hubs. Toe gauge #3008000 from Speedway $70. Toe gauge doubles as a wheel base side to side checker with an extension I made from square tubing. My turn tables are "Rand" units purchased off of E-bay. Think they were around $180. All three are quality pieces.

this month's issue of car craft magazine [april, 2017] has an article on using the "quick trick" alignment tool. page #48. even though the vehicle in the article is an '83 buick, it shows how the tool works and basic alignment principals. the article may be of interest to some.

Thanks for the heads up