89 f150 straight 6 5-speed

I put 2 brand new tie rod ends on the front of my truck.

Then I aligned it, by parking the truck on a flat level surface, directly facing a flat wall about 30 feet away and putting a laser across each of the back alloys, and marking the spot on the wall.

Then I put the laser on the front wheels and adjusted the tie-rod connections until the front wheels where exactly straight with the back wheels.

Now, it feels like theres just a tiny bit of "drift" in the steering of the truck, from left to right.

If I toe in the front wheels just a hair to take up for the natural factory tolerances, will that make the steering feel more "exact"?

If I do, how much should I toe it in?

With a laser hitting a wall 30 feet away, how much should I bring the laser point "in" from where the back wheels were?

Is there an angle spec?

If there is an angle spec, I can convert that into a measurement of the laser at 30 feet away, or if someone has a spec from the "old fashioned way" with string, I suppose I could convert that as well.

 

i dont know about the specs.....but yes, if you toe in just a bit it will take the drift out

 

1/4" toed in. I don't trust your method, tho, because it assumes the track of the vehicle is the same from front to back, and I don't think that is so. The rear track is less on our trucks than the front, which would then make you toed out. You should use a tape measure on the front and back of the front tires to set the toe, or you can get a toe bar from Harbor Freight for about $20, which makes it easier to do by yourself (otherwise you need another person to hold the tape measure).

 

1/4" at 30 feet?

Because I did some more research and found that .05 degrees toed in on each wheel seems to be pretty common on older full size ford vehilcles, which is about 1/4 inch at 30 feet, .314 inches.

 

Oh yeah I forgot to add, be sure to press outward on the front tires as hard as you can to simulate the pressure of going down the road before you measure.

 

Like I said, I don't trust your method due to track differences between front and rear, so this comment doesn't make sense to me. It's a quarter of an inch less distance between the front of the front tires and the back of the front tires, 30 feet's got nothing to do with it.

 

Well I can measure the outer width of the front wheels, then measure between the dots on the wall instead of just comparing to the rear.

The 30 feet is how far the truck is from the wall, the farther the vehicle is, the more pronounced the difference will be.

So you mean 1/4 at the edge of the rim itself? Using the string method? Seems like alot to me.

 

Yeah, I know what it is, I am just not agreeing with using it in setting your toe. If that was a viable method, then there would need to be a spec for how far away from the wall you could be. Trust me, use the tape measure, and set it to 1/4" toed in.

You must measure from the same point on the tire at the back and the front for the measurement to be meaningful. You can determine that a number of ways. In the olden days we used to have a tire scoring tool that made a mark all the way around the center of the tire, but I have been trying for years to find one on eBay with no luck. Now I use the tool I got from Harbor Freight which measures from the outside edge of the tire, but I used to just look very closely at the tread design and mark the center of the tire with a pen.

Dude, I have been doing it this way for over 30 years and I have never had tire wear problems. I set EVERYTHING to 1/4" in because I found, over the years, that was more or less the factory toe setting for every car I aligned in a shop.

 

is this the thing that looks sort of like a huge "C" clamp.....and has little wheels that roll along the inside and outside of the tire rim.....some sort of gears that keep a grease pencil in the center of the two little wheels, and you "roll" it around the tire and the grease pencil leaves a line down the center of the tire tread ?.............never seen one before.....

naa, i might just know where one is at

 

I'm stubborn

The laser thing is infinitely more accurate (even if my original concept was a little flawed) then just measuring directly on the rim.

I can use the tangent function and do the math to see how far apart the dots should be, based on how far away the wall is and what angle I'm going for.

I'll do the math and see what angle a quarter inch at the edge of the rim is.

 

1/4 inch in, assuming you measure 8 inches forward and behind the "center of the wheel" is 1.8 degrees toe in. Seems like alot.

 

are you setting both sides at 1/4 ? or each side at 1/8 for a total of a 1/4 ?

 

I see this is an older thread but, Dont use the rear at all. Its a solid. You want the front axle front and rear of the wheels a 1/16th difference toe in.

Ill assume you know you need to mark a straight line around the circumference of the tire in the center on each side for your reference points.
(Better?)

 

No, it was a spring loaded metal rod with point on the end. You would wind it around against the spring and set it up underneath the tire with the tire jacked up on the alignment rack. Then you would just spin the tire around and it would score the tire. But I am sure there are other such devices that might us a grease pencil.

 

I wish people would stop saying this on these forums. There is no need for a forum to tell people to "take it to a shop". The fact that this thread even exists says that the OP doesn't want to take it to a shop, he wants to learn how to do it himself.