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**Why Is Alignment Important?**

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.

**The Cost of Professional Alignment**

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. 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?

**My Love for Cars**

I like cars. You like cars. We like cars. So celebrate your love of cars with a new Joy of Cars t-shirt. You get it in au naturale. Also vintage black. Get it for the low low price of $29.98 only at donutmedia.com.

**DIY Alignment Project**

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.

**Corner Balancing with DIY Scales**

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. 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 scale.

**Toe Plates**

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...

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- 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 wheelspointing in the same direction,or you just installedsome new race car partsand you want maximum grip on track,well, a good alignment is key.You want your car to behave predictablyand the millimeter bymillimeter adjustmentsyou make in an alignmentcan make all the difference.And that's why alignment professionalsare never in short supply.But I think that we could geta pretty good track alignmentwith some DIY alignment toolsthat I just so happento have laying around.But the question is,is a $300 alignment froma pro worth all that moneyor can I get the same resultsdoing it myself in the driveway?Should I DIY, aye, come on,or should I don't?♪ Do it ♪♪ Don't do it ♪- I like cars.You like cars.We like cars.So celebrate your love of carswith a new Joy of Cars t-shirt.You get it in au naturale.Also vintage black.Get it for the low low price of $29.98only at donutmedia.com.Check it out.It's my favorite shirt to date.- Normally on this showI would do half the carand then the pro would do the other half.But on an alignment thatdoesn'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 specsand then I'm gonna hand thecar over to Tanner, our pro,and he is gonna hook hisprofessional gear up to the carand see whether or notI was doing what I thought I was doing.- Hello.- So in addition to aligning the Miata,we're gonna take a crackat a DIY corner balancingwith these big boy scales I found.700 pound capacity, $90 apiece. Goodbye.So I bought four of themand we're gonna drive the Miata onto themand see if we can corner balance the thingusing these bathroom scales.We'll see how accurate they are,especially when comparedto the pro's $1000-- Hello.- Hello!- These also talk which is really niceand 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 $200for off the old internet.I've used these, I'vehad these for a while.Used them on an episode of "Money Pit"where we aligned the Miata.These toe plates allow us tomeasure toe, caster, and camberand do an at home alignment.This is what we're gonna be using.Same tools we had before andthe same DIY stands that I madethat also serve as turn plates.These cost me probably about$20 or $30 in materialsand probably an hour or two of my time.So altogether we do haveabout $600 worth of stuff herewhich isn't too cheap,but if I can do a perfect alignmentand corner balancing on my own,then heck I could startcharging my friends.That's a business plan.We're not gonna get too into the weedswith 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 thechannel 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 ableto do a decent alignment?- Well, these are kind of funnybut the toe plates is good stuff.Tow plates are good for everything.We should be able to getpretty close with that.- I hope it just doesn'ttake 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 thespecifics of how to do that.And then I'm gonna swing 40degrees back to the rightand then I'm gonna take a measurement.Ah, right.This guy knows what he is talking about.Turn left, and I'm gonnatell you when to stop.There's 10 there's 15.One more, right there, stop.We're gonna go ahead andzero our gauge off the wheel.Probably the biggest room for erroris I'm responsible for holdingthis thing up to the wheeland I might not do that so good.So there's no way I'm gonna be as preciseas a pro can be with their toolsbecause 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 tobe a little bit unbelievable,I don't think we can get 8.6degrees of caster on this car.- I don't know, man.- Me neither, and this ishow I measured this beforeand got regular results.What am I doing wrong? AmI forgetting something?Probably my fault.Gonna get under there with my wrenches.Do a little turning.And when I make a turn it'sjust moving the suspension.Hopefully I'll be close.Hopefully it'll be better than a ballpark.Hopefully it'll be in theright seating section,you know what I mean.It's a much highernumber than I was gettinglast time we did this which is strange.- I would basically justmax your camber out.Max, max.If we push camber out yourcaster'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 offinding the happy mediumbetween all these things,which is time consuming becausethen you gotta take ameasurement each time.So I'm gonna say camber is good there,that's our target, 2.1 all around.I'm trying to be precisebut you can see that says 2.15 right now.I'm not gonna chase 2.10 becauseif I move this around outI can make it say 2.10.So I'm gonna lock that downand do the same thing to the other side.Dude, this takes me forever by myself.- You want me tobump it while you hold it?- Be my guest.Slap it just slightly. Just gentle slap.- That wasthe babiest of slaps.- One more baby slap.All right, so in terms of ourtoe measurement and adjustmentlast time we used a string box.It's a really old school trickthat even some F1 teamsI 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 checktoe across each axle,and these make that really easy.You basically hold these up to the wheeland then you run a tape measureacross the front and across the backto the other side wherethe other toe plate's at,and you take those two measurements.If those measurements areidentical on both tape measuresthen you know you've got no toebecause the distance betweenthe front of each wheel and tireand the rear of each wheeland the tire is the same.If that front distance isshorter, rear distance is bigger,that means they're toed in and vice versa.- What youreading over there, doctor?- I'm reading some mad toe in.- Just extendboth those (bleep).We'll remeasure.(bouncy jazz music)- Okay, let's see wherewe'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 sayenough is enough, man?So we need to add a littlecamber 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 toolsis that you can make adjustmentswith the tool on the tireand look at them as you make 'emso you don't have to keep doing this wholeback 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 arematched 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 abbreviatedversion for sure,and it still took ustwo hours, 20 minutes,48 seconds of fun.(upbeat music)Now I'm very interested to seehow close any of thesemeasurements have been,because the underlyingissue with the DIY wayis that every step of the wayI'm just questioning my measurementsand 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 meI'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'sdoing 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 methat our DIY toolsaren't the most accuratewhen it comes to measuring this stuff,which is kind of importantwhen it comes to an alignment.Did I get any measurements right?Are we screwed?- So basically, the firstthing I fixed was camber.And as soon as I changed camberI had to correct toe anyways.- What do you think my undoing was?Not having a level ground like you have?- I think thatwas probably most of it,was probably the floor, yeah.- These kind of allow himto create a level floorwhere there isn't one.So that takes away a lot of the guessworkthat I was dealing with.Jesus.So is that an alignment done?Now we just gotta do corner balancing?- Yeah, you wanna(bleep) with the weights?- 58 minutes, 12 seconds it took you to doan 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 definitelygonna be able to do it.Since we've got the carset up on your scales,I think we should cornerbalance it with your stuffso that it's actually accurate.- Yeah, let's jack it up and(bleep) with this (bleep).So these are Proforms likeBluetooth, blah, blah, blah.So there's four scales andthen one little computer.we got each corner of thecar, weight, and a percentage.So this is 600 pounds,that's actually 25.5% of the whole weight.- Okay, and that's the frontleft as denoted by the FL.- The biggestthing is you just wantthese two and those twoto equal the same thing.But basically just to make it symmetricalyou wanna get the crosses even.- So we took the wheel off.Why, how do you actually make changesto the balance of the car?- Think of it as like a chair.So if you have four poststhat have no springs,if you have a short corner,how much weights on that corner?- None.Yeah, if you had one longer leg,it would take all your weight.- And then obviouslythere's a tipping point.- Sure, and so we want toadd weight to this corner,so we're gonna Jack it up.- Yes, that is the theory.(chill jazzy beat)Let's put the wheel backon and see what it weighs.- Just try to gether a little settled.- So we are a percent closer,pretty much right there.Plus it's cool to leavethis side a hair lightjust 'cause you're gonna sit in it, yeah.- Well, that was quick.You only had to reallymess with one corner.Now is that usual?Do you usually find yourselfdoing a lot more tweaking?- As long as they have the preload squareand their heights where they want 'em,this is pretty much how it goes.- I feel like that was wayeasier than what I'm gonna do.So now we're gonna bustout our Amazon scales,drive onto 'em, see ifwe can get that to work.And then if it don't break immediately,we'll be able to see ifthey actually kind ofweigh this thing likewe would want them toto corner balance.Since each scale maxes at 700 pounds,we're gonna try to driveonto all four scalesat the same time just so theyall load up at the same timeand none of them eversee more than 700 pounds.If we did have to makeadjustments 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 themprobably a bunch of times,so that would suck.(engine turning)- Sick.- Why?- That thing sounds good.- You gotta give her a second.(engine starting)- That one's onstone, this is pounds.- Is it really?- Yeah, theyjust all shut off right now.- This would suck sobad if I was by myself.- Ready?- Ready.(engine revving)- Oh yes.- Aye, we're getting something!- Right there.- Ah, you're on the screen.- (bleep) thescreen up, you (bleep).- It's looking bent in the middle.- That was exciting at least.- Well, let's back off andtry to turn 'em on again,see what happens.Push me, push me.- Ah, didn't save the weight.Hey, stop.Goddamn.All right, you're good, you're good.Oh dude.- It's 588.- 588?- Wait for me to getout, wait for me to get out.- Let it settle,let it settle, let it settle.- I got 562.- That (bleep)pretty close, dude.- But it's hilarious,the reason it's switching tostone is 'cause it's bendingand hitting its own buttonon the floor. (laughing)Well, this was a success.No, I would hate to do this.While the scales seem to workand return a number thatis similar to what we goton Tanner's scales,this would be miserable,an absolute nightmare to use theseto actually balance your car.(Zach blows raspberry)Please get off me.What if I started saying some (bleep)?- 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 meto do an alignment on the car.He said it'd be about $300just for the alignment.So it's easy to think thatthe cost savings isn't too badsince then you have the tooland you get to keep using it.But the real problemcomes with the accuracyof what we were doing here today.It turned out it wasn't very accurate.If I were a little more meticulousand maybe built some nice leveling plateswe could probably havegotten a better result,but value isn't there to mebecause we weren'tgetting accurate numbers.Doing a DIY alignment is way more effortthan 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 doit DIY style in my opinion.It's terrible.All of a sudden you'reaccepting bad measurements.You're like, eh, that's probably good'cause I've done this 20 timesand 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 takingand that is definitely thecase with a DIY alignment.Today we did it pretty quicklyand it was still abouttwo and a half hours.But if you were doing this fromscratch on your own at home,it took me like six hoursthe first time I did itand it probably wasn't accurate.So time is a loss.Across the board, I'm calling this a loss.I would say that paying apro to give you an alignmentand making sure that you knowthat you are aligned like you want to beis 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 toolsand that's why they start businesses,because it's a servicethat you just can't reallyreplicate in your garage.Unfortunately, that's whatwe found to be true today.Well, that's gonna do it forthis episode of "DIY or Don't".I thank you guys for watchingit, I hope you enjoyed it,I hope you learned a thing or two.I definitely did.Wanna say a big thanks toTanner at OC Mobile Alignment.You can follow him onInstagram @OCmobilealignment.And an extra special bigthanks to carparts.comfor 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)