DIY Front Wheel Alignment

[epowell]

Hi, I'm Ed from the Vanagon section. We have a problem with Vanagons in that the Alignment System is an older (not currently well understood and known system among young new mechanics) system and most alignment shops don't know how to do all of the adjustments.

My question here is if you guys with T4s and T5s (Eurovans) have this same issue, or if with T4s and T5s VW had already "modernized" the wheel alignments system?

Next question is if anyone knows of a way to learn how to do Eurovan wheel alignment yourself? With Vanagons we have this amazing thread explaining it - https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=396113&highlight=

There is also the Bentley of course. Is there anything on-line which explains the Modern system of alignment?

What I want to do is study and understand how both the old and new systems work, that way I can interview perspective alignment shops to see if they really understand Vanagon alignment techniques.

Thanks
Ed
_________________
www.edwardpowell.com

[jjvincent]

I'm confused with what you call a modernized system of alignment. I've aligned plenty of Vanagons and they are nothing special. They just have more adjustments as compared to cars of today and that just has to do with a chassis today is so much more accurate than cars that were built 30 years ago.

A T4 has adjustable toe, caster, ride height and camper on the front and toe on the rear. Usually the one people don't know about is the rear toe is adjustable. They assume it's like an e30 BMW which doesn't. Other than that. it's pretty easy to figure out what's adjustable on the front.

[Zeitgeist 13]

Adjusting rear toe on a Vanagon is further complicated by the fact that in order to make the adjustment, the LCA bolts need to be loosened...and they're nearly always seized. Since the T4 has a similar rear suspension design, I wonder if those bolts are similarly prone to rusting in place.
_________________
Casey--

'89 Bluestar ALH w/12mm Waldo pump, PP764 and GT2052
'01 Weekender --> full camper
y u rune klassik?

[jjvincent]

The EV is similar. The bolts do rust into place. Most of the time, they are never touched until you need to replace the bushings. Then you use the blue wrench and an impact.

[gakali]

Alignment angles are alignment angles. Granted, some vehicles are a bit trickier (more work) to set up right but in the end the principles are all the same.

Sadly there are a lot of "set the toe and go" guys out there who say they can do an alignment but lack the skills to actually perform a full alignment from scratch. Modern vehicles are build to such a high degree of accuracy that there are very limited adjustments available. If a spec is out something often needs to be replaced because it's bent.

You just need to find an old school alignment guy that can do the job. I feel for you - I'm looking for that guy too as they are few and far between these days.

IMO if an alignment shop can't align or straighten out ANY vehicle they are not an alignment shop. Go somewhere else and don't believe their excuses.
_________________
Why do it? Because you can.

1999 Eurovan
2003 A4 Avant 1.8T Quattro
1992 W201 190e 2.3 Mercedes
2006 W220 S600 V12 Twin Turbo 5.5 Mercedes

[jjvincent]

I come from the world of racing. So at an event we run the car on the setup platform at least a dozen times. If you got a level surface, you don't need much to align a car.

We align and setup a car so often that it gets to the point where I get sick of it. On some cars it's a royal PIA to adjust. When I was on the factory Subaru team, the rear axle on that thing was a disaster. If you didn't have three guys there just to adjust the camber and toe, you would be there for hours. Change one and then the other changes. It had horrible bumpsteer so changing ride height was yet again, more camber and toe.

Only car that was worse was the old ex factory BMW M3 we had. The rear subframe had to be aligned to the tailshaft of the transmission because it had a one piece aluminum driveshaft with carbon fiber plates on each end. So when that was done, you had to realign the rear because the control arms attached to the subframe. If that wasn't bad enough the upper and lower were both adjustable and you only has a small amount of room to keep from the tire rubbing the rear shock or the outer fender. Once you got that done then the camber and then hopefully you had enough toe adjustment on the trailing arms.

The main problem was that I ended up becoming the only one that knew the trick as to getting it right, thus I had to always do it. When the car would get wrecked, it was like, "Oh goody, there's another 2 hours time I'll never get back."

Good thing was I never had to worry about aligning this car ever again (which was good because it was the biggest PIA of the three we had). I was the engineer on that team and you'll see me at the 1:20 mark:

Link

[epowell]

Holy smokes, did that driver survive??
_________________
www.edwardpowell.com

[Abscate]

You'll walk at from that in the right gear.....took a long time to dissipate energy, which is a good thing.

Nice three turns in the air in the pike position....degree of difficulty 8.9
_________________
🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🍊 🍊 🍊

[jjvincent]