Ohh, I will. But this will be a much better method than trying to calculate deltas from the last known measurements. And frankly, Camber/Caster are pretty high tolerance for a offroad suspension truck anyway, even if you are on the road.
I've got a local shop that will actually do what I tell them, and give me a report with the numbers set where I asked, but it's expensive and they won't take the UCAs off to make adjustments. So now I have to that myself, then get them to measure, and then make any adjustments as needed.
Right - Firestone lifetime type shit doesn't cut it; you need a good alignment tech who will bill by the hour for quality work. It'll kill the homebrew setup, every time.
It's not so much a question of quality; it's actually a question of price, right?
FWIW, I'm usually on the rack for about 3 hours to set up an alignment, and that usually includes scales. :shrug:
I found a shop that will give me exactly what I want. And they will adjust the uppers. Costs me $200+ each time. I've used a lot of different alignment shops and I this one is the best, I even drive an hour there and two hours back (traffic) just for an alignment.
Buuut not any more. F that.
Like I said, doesn't matter how good the shop is. Setting alignment to specific numbers is NOT a good way to align your truck. Set the alignment to the numbers as a BASELINE, then drive it and make adjustments to those baseline numbers until it drives the way you want it to.
I already gave the example for toe. I'll give another example. If I have dead even camber and caster, I still get a slight pull. Most likely I have a little bit of setback on one side. No biggie, I simply adjust a little in order to get rid of the pull. On my truck, it tracks perfectly straight at 90 mph with the following numbers:
Left: 7.2 deg caster, -0.3 deg camber
Right: 7.3 deg caster, -0.5 deg camber
I arrived at those numbers by driving it. No way a shop is gonna care about 1/10th of a degree. betcha the machines arent even that accurate.
Another thing to note. Toe is speed dependent when you are getting into the finer nuances of how it handles. You can set toe to be stable at 40 mph, but run those 37s up to 90 mph and the drag will compress the bushings (I have poly) enough to change the toe significantly. So you have to decide based on your driving and your truck where you want the toe set. A shop cant make that decision for you.
