Re: Basic front wheel alignment at home for free with the right tools

On Sat, 31 May 2025 23:07:59 -0500, Paul in Houston TX wrote:

Do you place it against the hub with the vehicle on the ground weighted?

  Always on the ground or simulated ground level.  Weighted would be
ideal but getting someone to sit in the driver's seat while you work on
the car may be difficult.  Placing bags of sand in the driver's seat
might work.  Remember, there is a specified settings _range_.  When I
was working at the Ford and Chevy dealerships the alignment specialists
would ask one of us to sit in the vehicle for a few min while he did the
final check.  He was fast.

Oh. My mistake. I understand you thought I meant weighted with a driver,
and I'm aware some marquees (like bmw) will ask for a certain amount of
weight in the trunk and back seats plus a driver side weight, but that's
not what I meant.

I need to look up the right term but "sprung" weight is what I meant.
There is curb weight, which I'm calling laden, which is the vehicle w/o
occupants in its normal situation where the suspension is compressed to its
typical operating point.

And then there's what happens when you remove the wheels, which is NOT
that. I think it's called unsprung weight where the vehicle is lifted off
the ground, and its suspension is fully extended and bearing no weight from
the car's body. This is when the wheels are "up in the air.

There's no way measurements are the same in those two situations, right?
The entire suspension geometry changes between those two scenarios.