Doing an alignment in the driveway on a 72 scamp

I learned how to do alignments about 25yrs ago after being frustrated with all the mis-alignments I used to pay for along with poor tread wear and handling charactersitcs.

An old mechanic I worked with during my Pontiac resoration stint in the 80's taught me how to use a simple tri-angu-liner bubble gauge attached to the wheel bearing spindle for checking caster and camber on a 58 Bonneville. My Dad was pretty good at driveway alignments too.

We would finish up with either strings or the tape measurer method to set toe in. Been doing my own alignments since then and never looked back. You don't need a $100k machine to set alighnment.

These cars are bushed in rubber for the upper and lower control arms and there is allot of flex in these old chassis. An alignment is nothing more than a pre-setting of the wheels with an expectation of how much the parts are going to move around once the car is in motion. No two cars will have the exact same setting to get optimum wear and handling.

That being said if all you have is a tape measurer and carpenters level you can do a front end alignment.

The most stumblebum way is to use the level to set the wheels pointing almost straight up in regard to camber with a carpenters bubble and then set the caster based on which way the car pulls left or right when you drive it. If the car pulls left add more positive caster to the left or subtract it from the right side and vice versa.

These cars seem to chew up radials if the camber is not close to zero, I would actually shoot for a small amount of negative camber.

A tape measurer works great for setting toe, if you get it close with the tape measurer, drive it for at least ten miles to get the tires warm and see if the outside edges are warmer than the insides. A little warmer is ok but if the outside edges are pretty warm you may want to decrease toe or re-check your camber setting. The outside edges feather out pretty quick if you have too much toe in. Right all your measurements down so you have a reference point when you re-check them.

With a little practice you will surprise yourself how well you can dial in the alignment to reduce tire wear and make the vehicle track the way you want it too.

As a reference my 73 Duster is set at approximately :

2-1/2 degrees positive caster driver side
2-3/4 degrees positve caster passenger side

Aprroximately 0 camber, any positive number over .5 causes the edges to get feathered out on the tires.

1/16" toe in. (Tried running zero to 1/16 toe out and it feathered the insides edges of the tires)

Running Firehawk 215-70r14 radials.

This is based on my own experiences with this car, other folks may have a different take.

Edited in: I park on black heavy duty trash bags, they make great low friction bearing surfaces and do not raise the vehicle in the front one bit.