Alignment (Old School Toe)

There are quite a few folks out there who measure Toe Angle using simple “old school” methods. These employ simple tools to measure Toe angle directly off the wheels and tires of a vehicle. The methods take two general forms.

First Toe Sticks… Here the distance between the wheels is measured directly using some form of a measuring “stick”. The tools range all the way from commercially available solutions to very clever home built systems. The image below shows an especially nice and very simple version of this sort of tool. A user simply measures the distance between the front and then the back of either set of wheels to directly measure toe angle. These kinds of tools have been around for a long time and are not only easy to use but also produce extremely accurate results.

The “Scriber” systems… The user “scribes” (or marks) a circumferential  line on the outside diameter of the tires that is then measured across the front and back of the wheels. While Longacre Racing (and others) sell Toe Angle gauges based on this method there are many examples of do-it-yourself systems out there as well. The first two images below show a particularly nice version of this method. This guy marks the tire using a silver colored Sharpie pen and then measures the toe angle using a simple stick (1” x 2”).

Marking the position of the sharpie lines on the stick at the front of the wheels and then moving the stick to the back provides a wonderfully simple guide for adjusting the toe angle.

The commercially available Toe Gauges work on these same principles and cost only about $100.

 

A couple things to note about the “scriber” methods.

First… Once again these systems only measure toe angle. Measuring thrust angle with a scriber system would be difficult.

Second… While both the Toe Stick and Scriber methods are easy to use and produce accurate, repeatable results they are difficult to implement while adjusting alignment.

The inherent simplicity and accuracy of these systems make them very valuable tools for quickly checking toe angle.