Just made my own tracking gauge for £7.96 today.

Happy to post instructions on here if anyone is interested. Or by email if you don't want others knowing your new secret weapon for 2004.....

Dickie

Ah go on.. post them up

Wouldn't mind a look at that one either post it up or drop me an email.


thanks

Yep.Post it up or put a link thankyou please.Share your knowledge,It'll give someone something to think about.probley me.OH my head hurts again.

really interestin please post!

that is the best avatar I have ever seen

"snigger piggy, snigger"!!

Build Your Own Tracking Gauge for £7.96

The gauge works by measuring the distance between the wheel rims at the front of the front wheel, and comparing that to the distance between the wheel rims at the rear of the front wheel.

The 3 main components are nothing to do with cars: a bracket that you would fix to the wall to mount shelves onto, and then two shelf brackets that you would normally hang off the first bracket. Words fail, see figure 1.
There are numerous different sizes and types. I went for the smallest bracket that still utilised 2 holes for the shelf brackets - ie greater stability. This variety also allows you to mount the shelf brackets either way up - essential as we will see later. I measured the distance between the inside rims of my front wheels at 116cm (approx, since I had not set the tracking at that point!) Buying a 150cm bracket then gave me enough left over to create 2 stabilisers, which I affixed with bolts, a penny washer, and wing nuts so that I could fold them back in again to transport around the country. Make sure your stabilisers are not too long - you will need to be able to turn the whole contraption on its side and slide it under your wishbones so that you can easily pass the gauge from the front of your wheel to the rear of the wheel. See figure 2.

The shelf brackets I chose were 27cm long - again they come in various sizes. The centre of my wheel is about 27 cm from the ground, so added to 2 widths of bracket (the base and stabilisers), that gave me about 30cm total height - ie enough to drill a hole through. Conveniently, the shelf brackets came pre-drilled, and of course they have a built in right-angle. I drilled the hole out to 6mm and then fixed through an M6 bolt with a nut either side of the bracket, using a large penny washer on the vertical side to ensure that this was the dominant side and therefore keeping everything at 90’. See figure 3. The 2 shelf brackets were then put back on the base bracket, and fixed in place with Araldite to ensure a consistent reading.

The gauge can then be used to measure the toe-in (or toe-out). If like me, you run 0 degrees, then get the car set up, and replace the nuts on the gauge with nylocs - you never need to adjust it again. If however you run a different setting then you can easily work out the difference in width from the front of your wheel rim to the rear of the wheel rim for that particular angle of toe-in/out. If you can’t then any teenager preparing for GCSE maths should be able to - it involves tangents. Of course the good thing about having used M6 bolts is that they have a 1mm pitch thread, so for one complete turn of one bolt, your tracking gauge has lengthened (or shortened) by 1mm - a doddle! Figures 4 and 5 show it in action. £7.96 well spent. Price list: Upright £3.99, 2 x shelf brackets at £1.99 each - Total £7.96.


Any problems:
My email address!

[Edited on 25/1/04 by DickieB]