- Why is this so confusing?
Why you do that?
God, I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
I hate this.
Whether your suspension is stock,
maybe you just want all your wheels
pointing in the same direction,
or you just installed some new race car parts
and you want maximum grip on track,
well, a good alignment is key.
You want your car to behave predictably
and the millimeter by millimeter adjustments
you make in an alignment can make all the difference.
And that's why alignment professionals
are never in short supply.
But I think that we could get a pretty good track alignment
with some DIY alignment tools
that I just so happen to have laying around.
But the question is,
is a $300 alignment from a pro worth all that money
or can I get the same results
doing it myself in the driveway?
Should I DIY, aye, come on,
or should I don't?
♪ Do it ♪
♪ Don't do it ♪
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You like cars.
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You get it in au naturale.
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It's my favorite shirt to date.
- Normally on this show I would do half the car
and then the pro would do the other half.
But on an alignment that doesn't really work.
So here's what we're gonna do today.
I'm gonna go through on the Miata,
do my DIY alignment, confirm my specs
and then I'm gonna hand the car over to Tanner, our pro,
and he is gonna hook his professional gear up to the car
and see whether or not
I was doing what I thought I was doing.
- [Scale] Hello.
- So in addition to aligning the Miata,
we're gonna take a crack at a DIY corner balancing
with these big boy scales I found.
700 pound capacity, $90 apiece. Goodbye.
So I bought four of them
and we're gonna drive the Miata onto them
and see if we can corner balance the thing
using these bathroom scales.
We'll see how accurate they are,
especially when compared to the pro's $1000-
- Hello. - Hello!
- These also talk which is really nice
and I don't think the pro's scales talk.
Though they might be more accurate.
We're gonna find out.
We've got toe plates here.
These I paid about $200 for off the old internet.
I've used these, I've had these for a while.
Used them on an episode of "Money Pit"
where we aligned the Miata.
These toe plates allow us to measure toe, caster, and camber
and do an at home alignment.
This is what we're gonna be using.
Same tools we had before and the same DIY stands that I made
that also serve as turn plates.
These cost me probably about $20 or $30 in materials
and probably an hour or two of my time.
So altogether we do have about $600 worth of stuff here
which isn't too cheap,
but if I can do a perfect alignment
and corner balancing on my own,
then heck I could start charging my friends.
That's a business plan.
We're not gonna get too into the weeds
with the actual alignment adjustments.
If you do wanna learn more about that,
go check out that episode of "Money Pit".
It's a real rabbit hole.
We've got our pro here,
this is Tanner from OC Mobile Alignment,
and he has been on the channel a few times.
We had him on "Hi Low".
You align Jeremiah's sweet Camaro.
- Yep, yep. I'm very excited. - Hell yeah.
- You think I'm gonna be able to do a decent alignment?
- Well, these are kind of funny
but the toe plates is good stuff.
Tow plates are good for everything.
We should be able to get pretty close with that.
- I hope it just doesn't take too much effort.
Well (bleep), what the hell?
(indistinct) (bleep).
Stupid son of a (bleep).
You know what time it is.
(funky electronic music)
I'm gonna go ahead and check caster first.
I need to go remember the specifics of how to do that.
And then I'm gonna swing 40 degrees back to the right
and then I'm gonna take a measurement.
Ah, right.
This guy knows what he is talking about.
Turn left, and I'm gonna tell you when to stop.
There's 10 there's 15.
One more, right there, stop.
We're gonna go ahead and zero our gauge off the wheel.
Probably the biggest room for error
is I'm responsible for holding this thing up to the wheel
and I might not do that so good.
So there's no way I'm gonna be as precise
as a pro can be with their tools
because they don't have to just hold 'em.
Okay, so now we're zeroed.
All right, so now back to the right.
So there's zero, 15.
Okay, stop.
Now, we'll take a measurement from here.
We get 4.3 which I find to be a little bit unbelievable,
I don't think we can get 8.6 degrees of caster on this car.
- [Cameraman] I don't know, man.
- Me neither, and this is how I measured this before
and got regular results.
What am I doing wrong? Am I forgetting something?
Probably my fault.
Gonna get under there with my wrenches.
Do a little turning.
And when I make a turn it's just moving the suspension.
Hopefully I'll be close.
Hopefully it'll be better than a ballpark.
Hopefully it'll be in the right seating section,
you know what I mean.
It's a much higher number than I was getting
last time we did this which is strange.
- I would basically just max your camber out.
Max, max.
If we push camber out your caster's gonna go down.
- The problem with alignment specs,
they're all kind of intertwined,
they all kind of affect each other.
So it's just sort of finding the happy medium
between all these things,
which is time consuming because
then you gotta take a measurement each time.
So I'm gonna say camber is good there,
that's our target, 2.1 all around.
I'm trying to be precise
but you can see that says 2.15 right now.
I'm not gonna chase 2.10 because
if I move this around out I can make it say 2.10.
So I'm gonna lock that down
and do the same thing to the other side.
Dude, this takes me forever by myself.
- [Tanner] You want me to bump it while you hold it?
- [Zach] Be my guest.
Slap it just slightly. Just gentle slap.
- [Cameraman] That was the babiest of slaps.
- One more baby slap.
All right, so in terms of our toe measurement and adjustment
last time we used a string box.
It's a really old school trick
that even some F1 teams I believe still use.
And that turned out great,
but we're not gonna do that today.
It's more time consuming, it's a little more tedious.
All I need to do is check toe across each axle,
and these make that really easy.
You basically hold these up to the wheel
and then you run a tape measure
across the front and across the back
to the other side where the other toe plate's at,
and you take those two measurements.
If those measurements are identical on both tape measures
then you know you've got no toe
because the distance between
the front of each wheel and tire
and the rear of each wheel and the tire is the same.
If that front distance is shorter, rear distance is bigger,
that means they're toed in and vice versa.
- [Cameraman] What you reading over there, doctor?
- I'm reading some mad toe in.
- [Cameraman] Just extend both those (bleep).
We'll remeasure.
(bouncy jazz music)
- Okay, let's see where we're at with that.
I mean, we are so far out.
I can't believe it.
Why is this so confusing?
God, I don't know what I'm doing wrong,
but it seems to be something.
(bouncy jazz music)
Can I tag the pro in? Can I tap out?
When do I get to say enough is enough, man?
So we need to add a little camber back into this side,
take a little out of that side.
Let's see what that does.
- You're at 2.8. - 2.8? What in the (bleep)?
- What's it's really nice about pro tools
is that you can make adjustments with the tool on the tire
and look at them as you make 'em
so you don't have to keep doing this whole
back and forth rigamarole.
2.5 degrees of camber. - Degrees, Jesus cow.
- Jesus cow (laughing).
Why you do that? Why you doing that to me?
Hell yeah, dude. 420.
You stupid son of a (bleep). Is that true?
I hate this.
Hey Tanner, are you having a good time?
- Yeah, this brings back memories.
(bouncy jazz music)
- 3.6.
Okay, so the sides are matched or close enough.
Wait a minute, does that mean we're done?
I'm done? DIY done? - Guess so, yeah.
Yay!
And this was the abbreviated version for sure,
and it still took us two hours, 20 minutes,
48 seconds of fun.
(upbeat music)
Now I'm very interested to see
how close any of these measurements have been,
because the underlying issue with the DIY way
is that every step of the way
I'm just questioning my measurements
and my judgment and my tools.
Let's hand this thing over to Tanner,
see what he wants to do.
I suppose since he's been helpful to me
I'll be helpful to him.
♪ This is our guy Tanner ♪
♪ Not a man of many words ♪
- (bleep) off. (bleep) Miatas.
(bleep) (bleep).
♪ So let's explain what he's doing in layman's terms ♪
♪ He's got lasers strapped to hangers ♪
♪ Got it locked to the wheels tight ♪
♪ And the lasers point at targets ♪
♪ So you know it's precise ♪
♪ That little box that he's got, ooh, it's really something ♪
♪ He can switch up the function ♪
♪ With just the push of a button ♪
♪ And when he makes his adjustments ♪
♪ You're gonna say wow ♪
♪ That was really fast, man ♪
♪ Jesus cow ♪
- It's become pretty apparent to me
that our DIY tools aren't the most accurate
when it comes to measuring this stuff,
which is kind of important when it comes to an alignment.
Did I get any measurements right?
Are we screwed?
- So basically, the first thing I fixed was camber.
And as soon as I changed camber
I had to correct toe anyways.
- [Zach] What do you think my undoing was?
Not having a level ground like you have?
- [Tanner] I think that was probably most of it,
was probably the floor, yeah.
- These kind of allow him to create a level floor
where there isn't one.
So that takes away a lot of the guesswork
that I was dealing with.
Jesus.
So is that an alignment done?
Now we just gotta do corner balancing?
- [Tanner] Yeah, you wanna (bleep) with the weights?
- 58 minutes, 12 seconds it took you to do
an actually accurate alignment,
with leveling the ground, setting up, and everything.
That's not too bad.
(funky synth music)
Definitely way better than mine,
but we're gonna do another thing today.
We're gonna try to corner balance the car.
Well, when I say try, I'm gonna try,
but you are definitely gonna be able to do it.
Since we've got the car set up on your scales,
I think we should corner balance it with your stuff
so that it's actually accurate.
- Yeah, let's jack it up and (bleep) with this (bleep).
So these are Proforms like Bluetooth, blah, blah, blah.
So there's four scales and then one little computer.
we got each corner of the car, weight, and a percentage.
So this is 600 pounds,
that's actually 25.5% of the whole weight.
- Okay, and that's the front left as denoted by the FL.
- [Tanner] The biggest thing is you just want
these two and those two to equal the same thing.
But basically just to make it symmetrical
you wanna get the crosses even.
- So we took the wheel off.
Why, how do you actually make changes
to the balance of the car?
- Think of it as like a chair.
So if you have four posts that have no springs,
if you have a short corner,
how much weights on that corner?
- [Zach] None.
Yeah, if you had one longer leg,
it would take all your weight.
- [Tanner] And then obviously there's a tipping point.
- Sure, and so we want to add weight to this corner,
so we're gonna Jack it up.
- [Tanner] Yes, that is the theory.
(chill jazzy beat)
Let's put the wheel back on and see what it weighs.
- [Zach] Just try to get her a little settled.
- [Tanner] So we are a percent closer,
pretty much right there.
Plus it's cool to leave this side a hair light
just 'cause you're gonna sit in it, yeah.
- Well, that was quick.
You only had to really mess with one corner.
Now is that usual?
Do you usually find yourself doing a lot more tweaking?
- As long as they have the preload square
and their heights where they want 'em,
this is pretty much how it goes.
- I feel like that was way easier than what I'm gonna do.
So now we're gonna bust out our Amazon scales,
drive onto 'em, see if we can get that to work.
And then if it don't break immediately,
we'll be able to see if they actually kind of
weigh this thing like we would want them to
to corner balance.
Since each scale maxes at 700 pounds,
we're gonna try to drive onto all four scales
at the same time just so they all load up at the same time
and none of them ever see more than 700 pounds.
If we did have to make adjustments with these scales,
we'd have to drive off of them,
jack the car up, make adjustments, then put the car down,
then drive back on them probably a bunch of times,
so that would suck.
(engine turning)
- [Cameraman] Sick.
- Why?
- [Cameraman] That thing sounds good.
- You gotta give her a second.
(engine starting)
- [Scale] That one's on stone, this is pounds.
- [Zach] Is it really?
- [Cameraman] Yeah, they just all shut off right now.
- This would suck so bad if I was by myself.
- Ready? - Ready.
(engine revving)
- [Cameraman] Oh yes.
- [Man] Aye, we're getting something!
- Right there. - Ah, you're on the screen.
- [Cameraman] (bleep) the screen up, you (bleep).
- [Zach] It's looking bent in the middle.
- [Cameraman] That was exciting at least.
- Well, let's back off and try to turn 'em on again,
see what happens.
Push me, push me.
- [Cameraman] Ah, didn't save the weight.
Hey, stop.
Goddamn.
All right, you're good, you're good.
Oh dude.
- It's 588. - 588?
- [Zach] Wait for me to get out, wait for me to get out.
- [Cameraman] Let it settle, let it settle, let it settle.
- [Zach] I got 562.
- [Cameraman] That (bleep) pretty close, dude.
- But it's hilarious,
the reason it's switching to stone is 'cause it's bending
and hitting its own button on the floor. (laughing)
Well, this was a success.
No, I would hate to do this.
While the scales seem to work
and return a number that is similar to what we got
on Tanner's scales,
this would be miserable,
an absolute nightmare to use these
to actually balance your car.
(Zach blows raspberry)
Please get off me.
What if I started saying some (bleep)?
- [Scale] Goodbye.
- Okay, so let's talk about some things.
First, let's talk about cost.
Well, I spent about $200,
which is less than Tanner would charge me
to do an alignment on the car.
He said it'd be about $300 just for the alignment.
So it's easy to think that the cost savings isn't too bad
since then you have the tool and you get to keep using it.
But the real problem comes with the accuracy
of what we were doing here today.
It turned out it wasn't very accurate.
If I were a little more meticulous
and maybe built some nice leveling plates
we could probably have gotten a better result,
but value isn't there to me
because we weren't getting accurate numbers.
Doing a DIY alignment is way more effort
than paying somebody to do it,
and that's pretty obvious.
The amount of back and forth,
up and down, checking, twisting, turning,
it's just too painful to do it DIY style in my opinion.
It's terrible.
All of a sudden you're accepting bad measurements.
You're like, eh, that's probably good
'cause I've done this 20 times
and I just don't wanna do it anymore.
Time and effort are kind of intertwined.
The more effort you put in,
usually the more time you end up taking
and that is definitely the case with a DIY alignment.
Today we did it pretty quickly
and it was still about two and a half hours.
But if you were doing this from scratch on your own at home,
it took me like six hours the first time I did it
and it probably wasn't accurate.
So time is a loss.
Across the board, I'm calling this a loss.
I would say that paying a pro to give you an alignment
and making sure that you know
that you are aligned like you want to be
is totally worth it.
Breaks my dang heart, right in there.
I love DIYing stuff,
and even though it is a pain in the ass,
it would be nice if it worked.
And it just didn't.
Sucks but,
well it doesn't suck.
That's why these pros exist.
That's why they spend the money on tools
and that's why they start businesses,
because it's a service
that you just can't really replicate in your garage.
Unfortunately, that's what we found to be true today.
Well, that's gonna do it for this episode of "DIY or Don't".
I thank you guys for watching it, I hope you enjoyed it,
I hope you learned a thing or two.
I definitely did.
Wanna say a big thanks to Tanner at OC Mobile Alignment.
You can follow him on Instagram @OCmobilealignment.
And an extra special big thanks to carparts.com
for sponsoring this episode.
If you need any parts for your car,
go to carparts.com.
You can follow me on Instagram @zachjobe.
Follow Donut @donutmedia.
Don't forget to like the video, subscribe to the channel,
and I'll see you next week.
Peace.
♪ Jesus cow ♪
♪ Save us now ♪
(cow mooing)