If you mean 'tracking': that's seriously easy..... and cheap!
All you need is a stiff tape measure and a piece of chalk..... and you can do with the chalk if you must.
1) Put the kart on the stand
2) Check the steering is set very roughly dead-ahead
3} Mark a small but easily seen chalk 'dot' on the middle of each front tyre. Those will be your measuring points. You can do without the chalk if you can find easily identifiable marks on each tyre. The placement of the chalk dot does NOT matter.... anywhere you can see it on the tyres 'tread'.
4) Rotate both tyres so the 'dots' are at the front.
5) Measure (with tape) the EXACT distance between the dots to within (let's guess) 1mm.
6) Now, rotate the wheels so that the dots are as far back as practical (you see this in a moment).
7) Now measure the distance between the two dots by feeding the tape through all the hardware keeping it TOTALLY straight. It is possible that you can only get close to those dots whatever you do if you rotate the dots to the very back of the wheel so rotate the tyres the smallest amount forward (backward) possible for you to get the tape onto the dots, accurately
8) You will now have 2 measurements. If the 'front one' is smaller than the 'rear', then you have 'toe-in' of that amount. If they are identical, then you have parallel 'toe', if the front is LARGER than the rear, you have 'toe-out'. The number of millimetres difference is the AMOUNT of toe-in/toe-out. I am sure you know how to adjust the tracking. If not, tell me and I'll explain how.
As I said, that's not difficult, is it?
Some people will read this and say 'oh.... I can get MUCH more accuracy than that with my laser'. Yeah..... great..... the CORRECT question then is: WHY would you bother? Look at it logically: if they set their tyres to 1mm toe-in and can detect and accuracy of 1.1mm, how do they KNOW that 1.1mm or 0.9mm wasn't a BETTER setting. This point is more obvious if I increase the accuracy to 1.1269mm.... who the HELL knows if 1.1269mm is better or worse than 1.1268mm? My argument is, there is ZERO practical advantage to being more accurate than you can use PRACTICALLY!
You need to consider more things. Place the kart on a flat floor, and then STEP onto the front bumper. The chassis will lower (because it flexes) and you'll note the 'tracking' changing to usually (but not always) more toe-in than before you applied weight. The amount of change is proportional to the weight applied. Just imagine what happened to your tracking when under full RACE loading! Many argue that you are really looking for 'dead ahead' in the race.... and that's NOT the same as 'dead-ahead' on the STAND, that might need you to set the track to toe-out on the stand. By all means, ask the manufacturer their recommendations BUT, the only way to KNOW is to TRY (test) various settings and see what happens to the handling. Also note that many drivers INCREASE the Toe-Out for wet races. When it rains, suddenly, I've seen the quick guys WHACK their track rods with their heel which bends the rod and that gives (further) toe out..... I've even seen this DURING a race where it has started to rain a few laps into the race.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
Ian
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Font wheel alignment by 'chopper134g' (07 Sep 2015 @ 20:36)
