Prepping your workspace/tools

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Workspace:

You need a level place to do the alignment, most home garages will suffice. Smooth sealed concrete is best but you can make do with rough concrete or asphalt if need be.
You want some room on the sides of the car to work and if possible enough room to roll the car back out of the alignment space.

 


Tools:

You need the following stuff, I'll go into more detail below.

Slip plates
Caster camber gauge
String
Precision ruler
Protractor
Tape measure
Jack stands
Straight edge / Toe plate
Straight Pipe/conduit
Clamps
Steering wheel holder
Painters tape

Hand tools
4WS locking tool


 

Slip plates
You need to make some slip plates for when you adjust caster and toe. These go under your tires while you do the alignment and reduce friction between the tires and ground when they are turned.
If you have a smooth floor you can take some trash bags, fold them over on themselves, and spray the inside of the fold with WD-40:


If you are working on a rough surface you need to buy 8 linoleum/vinyl tiles from the hardware store:

Just get the smoothest and cheapest ones they have. Two of these will go under each wheel with a layer of grease between to reduce friction.

 

 

Caster camber gauge

The Longacre part number on this is 78250. You don't need to use this particular gauge, there are plenty of options out there. But this tutorial is designed for this style gauge so you may need to adjust the technique if using something else.

Once you have the gauge you need to attach it top a piece steel/aluminium that is long enough to rest on the rim of the wheel like shown here:

More on this in the caster section.

 

 

String
Two pieces that are 1.5x the length of the car. It should be a thin string with no "fuzziness".

 

 

Precision ruler

That cheap wood one you had in school wont cut it. You want a precision metal ruler that reads in 64ths of an inch and/or half millimeters.

 

 

Protractor

I got this one on Amazon, the local hardware store should also have one.

 

 

Tape measure
Ones of the smaller more wieldy tape measures would be best.

 

 

Jack stands
Get 4 jack stands.

 

 

Straight edge / Toe plate

This can be anything that is 6-8" tall and as wide as the tire. In the picture above I'm using an old piece of wood. It should also be fairly straight.

 

 

Straight Pipe/conduit

You need two pieces that are at least 71" long. You could use rigid wood as well.

 

 

Clamps
Just 4 clamps of any type. You can see the ones I'm using on the jacks up there /\

 

 

Steering wheel holder

This holds the steering wheel in a centered position so that it doesn't move when you are adjusting toe.

 

 

Painters tape

You just need a little bit.

 

 

Hand tools
Any standard sizes used on Honda's plus these larger ones:

22mm short wrench/crows foot or 7/8" short wrench/crows foot
24 mm deep socket or 15/16" deep socket

 

 

4WS locking tool

If your car is 4WS you need something to lock the rear steering gearbox. It's unlikely you will be able to find an original Honda tool so you are left with shoving a screw driver or drill bit up there to lock it. Or you could just buy a new tool from a user named Nailbender on Preludepower, who makes his own: http://www.preludepower.com/forums/showthread.php?t=357959

 

 

Got all that? Prepping the Car is next.