Pinto Car Club of America

Ive taken apart the front suspension to clean and paint it. Now its back together, but is there any way to perform a wheel alignment, shadetree mechanic style? I don't have the special alignment tool thats needed but need to get it close enough to be driveable until I can get it into a shop.
I was thinking of taking measurements and dropping a string over the fender to use as a sight line as well as using a level and hopefully could position the A arm close enough to get the wheels straight. Any ideas?

i just did mine by sight, but i drove it right to the shop after to get it alighned. If you moved the upper A arms (to replace them or clean them) they have a crosshatch pattern on the bottom of the mounts and will have left an imprint on the top of the shock tower. Just do them up in the same location when you reassemble and tighten them.

I, too, have also done several shade tree alignments by sight. I am, however, gifted with the ability to discern vertical and horizontal "straightness." (This is not a joke. I *can* eyeball something and tell if it is aligned with the vertical axis, horizontal axis, or a target it is to be parallel to).

In order to "do it right by sight," I do the following:

Make sure the steering wheel is on the column straight before ever changing anything else (or knowing what relationship the steering wheel's rotation has to moving in a straight line).

Drive the car onto a hard work surface making sure to keep the wheels straight.

Examine the "toe" and "camber" from the front of the vehicle. Generally, this means lying on the ground head on to the tire tread (so I can't see the side of the tire) and sighting the perpendicular edge of the front sidewall with the rear tire's sidewall. Also, if I can see the tire's interior or exterior sidewall when the car is steered straight ahead and parked, I need to make a rotational adjustment to the tower so that all I see is the tread pattern when I look at the tire head on.

Check the "squash" of the tire by letting a little air out of *both* front tires temporarily (about 10 or 15 psi and making sure both tires are equally inflated/deinflated). Check each tire. If a tire has a larger "squash bulge" to the inside or outside, this is an indication that the tire is not in vertical alignment.