I described this to the guys as a wheel aligment doohicky thing. It’s actually a pretty nifty gadget for measuring the alignment of your wheels/suspension. It’s basically a jig with a calibrated bubble level that you set against a wheel. Set it first on the ground and zero the bubble, then set it against wheel with the three contact points flush and even against the rim. You can then read your camber off the bubble. You can also measure caster (the tilt of the steering axis) with this same device. To do this, you turn wheel 15 degreesfrom straight, there’s an angle cut on the end of the bubble level to help set this. You then zero the bubble on the caster scale. You then turn the steering to 15 degrees from straight in the other direction and read the bubble scale. Finally you can measure toe using the additional accessory arms you can see extending forward and rearward from the bottom of the jig. Measurement here is kind of caveman by using a tape measure to a straight bar you hold to the wheel on the other side, or if you’re rich, you buy two sets of these doohickies. I haven’t checked it against the FX which just had an alignment about a month ago, but did use it on the AE86 today. Showed my toe was set way too in, which I’m not surprised since I had replaced the steering rack and pretty much eyeballed the tie rod adjustment. I reset it, prob should take it for a test drive to see if it drives better now. Other specs aren’t grossly off according to the doohicky.
The only problem I had using this was getting it to stay on the rim, cranking the center knob turns a rack & pinion arrangement that extends or retracts the vertical arm which is supposed to allow it to clamp against the rim. But it’s hard to get with enough force to grip without feeling you’ll damage something. It’s pretty well made, but it doesn’t feel like you can really crank on it too much. For taking the toe reading by yourself, you need it to stay on the rim by itself. It’s not cheap, but not expensive when you consider an alignment job costs over $100. You can’t measure thrust angle, but that’s not something you can do a whole lot about anyway. So I figure it’ll be good for checking and adjusting alignment after installing parts and then taking to shop less often for a full alignment job.
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