Rear Alignment Part 1

This is proving to be extremely time consuming and I've realised during the process I may be missing some taper washers (yet another thing a simple items list on delivery would have avoided). Cut some 700mm bar with a hole 375 from one end (as per the manual) with the longer length forward. Put one bar on each rear hub. The aim is to shim the rear-pivoting hubs so that the distance between the bars front and rear is the same. This means that the rear hubs are aligned with each other. That wasn't too difficult.

The difficulty then came maintaining that setting whilst trying to align the wheels with the rest of the car. The rear wheels may be parallel to each other, but they weren't parallel with the rest of the car.

I had removed the rear left control arm to have a look at drilling the lower mounting hole in the hub, realised I didn't have a 10mm drill bit so left it with the arm off. I then went through the alignment procedure described above without the control arm attached, which put the whole rear end on the wonk. Confused me for a good half an hour that did before I fitted the arm and could continue.

I bought a small laser level from the Homebase the other day with a magnetic base so I can  put that on one of the bars, which projects a vertical line to the front of the car. The manual then suggests to measure the distance from a good datum on the chassis, the from crosslink mount. Trusty steel rule was employed and when I did this I was amazed how far out the hubs were, even though they are presumably jigged up before welding they were dissapointingly misaligned and I had to make up the difference with a LOT of shim washers. A 0.15mm shim on the rear hub is 2mm on the front measurement and from the initial setting I had to make up over 15mm. That's nearly 5mm of shim washers on the rear end. It took a lot of iterations of changing shims/measuring to get it right.

The good thing to know after speaking to someone at Dax is that getting the measurements within 2mm is acceptable, this equates to 5 minutes toe, so giving it to a garage to do they probably wouldn't get much better. Final setup is within 1mm on the measurements, tending towards toe in which is more stable. Once the car is moving all the compliance in the system will probably mean it ends up tracking straight. Hopefully. Tyre wear will reveal how good it is.

I plan on string-boxing the car when its complete which to me seems a better method than this bar-and-sight that Dax describe in the manual.

Alignment bar fitted to rear left hub:

Rear end with alignment bars fitted to both sides. Looks a bit agricultural but it does work!