Has anyone used a gunson trakrite for wheel alignment? u drive over it and as the platform is on a roller bearing, the table rotates showing the angle of alignment?

good idea or useless bit of kit?


[Edited on 23/9/08 by jamrogers]

I believe that for a production car, the basic ones that have fixed camber & castor by virtue of the suspension geometry, then the trackrite will help with indicating toe in/out errors and the change in toe needed.
However, for a seven, without knowing that camber & castor are correct (or even what they should be) then it's going to be much less useful.
I have one, and it has helped, but I STILL have no idea what my camber & castor measurements are or even what they should be.
One of these days I'm going to get it setup at a laser wheel alignment place to get some sort of basis to work from.

Best thing for camber adjustment is a cheapo inclinometer off Ebay. The nice ones have magnets on the best so you can attach it to the brake disc. Voila! Job done. Easy camber measurement.

For measuring toe-in the best thing (IMHO) is a decididly locost pair of tracking calipers.

At some point I really must do a tutorial on tracking using these things. I did it the other day and it's a PoP!!!

They work fine, I've set up the Locost and a couple of tin-tops, several months later tyre wear is even with no handling problems. It paid for itself in no time.

im in the process of making my own tracking bar. It will look a little like this:



with an adjustable threaded rod to measure the distance between front a rear most points on the front wheels.

It could also double as a camber measurer with some tweeks.

So far parts have cost under £40.

i thought about making something like that but the bar would have to be quite thick to make sure it doesn't flex...