Has anyone personally used or have thoughts on the longacre toe plates with tape: http://s2.pegasusautoracing.com/prod...asp?RecID=5124

Or the toe gauge:
http://s2.pegasusautoracing.com/prod...asp?RecID=2712

Will these give accurate measurements if the garage floor isn't completely level?

 

As long as the toe plates register off the wheels (and they aren't bent or otherwise damaged), you'll be good to about half of whatever resolution your tapes are good to, down to about ±1/32".

Your setup area needs to be reasonably close to flat, since uneven ride heights side to side mean that the wheel cambers won't be quite what they should be, and toe does change slightly as camber changes. However, you can always shim the low tire spot(s) up with something like 1/8" hardboard or vinyl floor tiles. Use a clear tube with water in it, bent up at the wheel spots and shim until the water height above the shims is the same as the water height above the floor on the high place(s). Or use a laser level.

(Internet filters aren't letting me see the links)


Norm

 

Thanks for the input Norm. I've been needing an excuse to purchase a nice laser level and throwing down some tiles to level things out shouldn't be a big deal. At least it will be easier than running a string around the car.

 

I've been using the toe plates for a while now. They don't rest on the wheel, so your accuracy is only as good as the uniformity of your tire to the wheel. That said, when I use the plates I routinely measure from the plate to the wheel just to check for that variable and find that the my tires appear to be uniform in shape and don't introduce any significant error in measurement.

Besides, having gotten an alignment before that was off by 1/2" (1/2" of toe out measured at the edges of the wheels when I wanted 0), I'd have to say that the plates are infinitely more accurate than what you may find at your local alignment shop. (FWIW, the alignment shop's printout said 0 degrees. I think their machine was incorrectly calibrated or something.) On the plus side I found out that 1/2" of toe out actually works well for autox but will destroy tires rather quickly on the highway.

 

Yeah, 1/2''/.5'' toe out is a lot. Say bye bye to your tires in short notice and I can only imagine how darty the front end would be with that much toe.

I've personally experimented with between .0 -.1 and am running .05 now. I've been playing around with camber which I know affects toe. I just don't know to what extent and would like to be able to quickly check it at home.

I think I'm going to pick up a set of those plates. Thanks for the feedback guys!