Update: Read on for the gauge part, but now I’ve finished off the alignment toolkit with a Ryobi self leveling laser. Put that baby in the middle of where the car will be, and use Home Depot $0.59 vinyl floor tiles to get the work area absolutely level before you use the following gauge. With that projecting a horizontal level laser and a ruler at the corners to setup the tiles, you won’t ever have to zero it against the ground anymore (every time you power it off, it goes back to default). I’m within 1/16″ at all 4 corners, with the highest corner getting 0 tiles, and the lowest corner getting 9.

A few years ago I used someone’s “Smart Camber” digital camber gauge. It was awesome! You could zero it on the ground and measure your camber on uneven ground with 0.1 accuracy. I was going to get my own, but the $250 street price kind of discouraged me. Being the DIY type, I decided to make my own.

Take:

• (1) Digital Level from Sears with 0.1 accuracy which can be found on sale for $35
• (1) 20in long, 1″ wide, 1/8″ thick piece of steel from Home Depot Racing
• (2) 1″ long 1/4″ thick metal spacers from HDR
• (2) Allen head 1.5″ bolts
• (2) Nuts and washers

Drill a hole on one end of the sheetmetal, then 3 holes for 15, 16 and 17″ wheels on the other end. Put in the bolts into the spacers, through the sheetmetal and throw a washer/nut on the other end. The pictures at the end of the post show what I’m talking about. The level attaches to the sheetmetal and is very sturdy as it has a nice big magnet in it.

edit: This part is no longer necessary if you do the above laser/floor tile leveling of your surface. Only if you are doing this on uneven ground. To do an alignment, just set the gauge on the ground in front of your tire and level out to 0 with the “zero” button.

Then place against your wheel and do a tiny bit of math. 88 degrees on the gauge = -2 degrees camber. Easy, accurate to 0.1, and under $40 including all materials. It’s been working great the last season and between this, and stringing up the car for toe, I can do pro alignments in the garage or the pits whenever I please. After the lift, the Jeep went to the shop for an alignment, so I got to verify the accuracy of the gauge and it matched their Hunter machine.

I’ve thought about making a better mount for the level, which would allow me to zero out the gauge vertically, but this has been working so well, I never bothered. If someone comes up with something better, send me a note.

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She’s almost ready for the ARRC (American Road Race of Champions, the Improved Touring National Championship). Got a good amount of work done today. New radius rod bearings, coolant flush, radio install, caliper rebuilds, etc etc. Pretty much all that is left is to bleed the brakes and do a once over on all the nuts and bolts. I also put the new “REDRUM” sticker on the front bumper. I was going to paint it and then put the sticker on, but I decided I’ll be doing lots of bump drafting at the ARRC, so I might as well make it pretty during the offseason. Last but not leas, but front splitter is coming in a few weeks. That should give me a bit of downforce in the high speed turns, but also free up a mph or two on the top end. I’m looking forward to that, as started to get to the point where I was going to make the car looser with a bigger rear bar. I think the splitter will be just enough to make it a tad looser then it is today, without going overboard. We’ll see!

I had another awesome weekend at Road Atlanta. This time it was a super super hot July weekend with a SARRC 15 lap sprint race, and an ECR 90 minute enduro race with the old car owner as codriver. The sprint races are the ones I focus on, while we were just running the enduro so Dan could keep his competition license. In SCCA, you have to run 2 races a year to maintain a license.

The weekend started out with qualifying, and I put myself on pole by 2 seconds for the SARRC race. I only ran a 1:44.3, but considering the hot weather, it was a pretty good time that I was happy with. In the afternoon, Dan got in the car and shook some rust off, putting us middle of the pack for the start of the ECR. Saturday evening was eventful, with me leaving the new brake pads I needed at work. We had to drive back from Road Atlanta and ended up spending the night in Marietta. Next time I’m making a list before leaving the house

We put on the older Hoosier tires for Sunday morning’s 90 minute ECR. Immediately, I noticed a vibration above 100mph, which was probably an out of balance tire or two. I came into the pits after about 15 minutes instead of my 45, as I didn’t want to hurt the car. It wasn’t worth continuing with everything shaking, as this wasn’t a points race or anything. We took the tires off and got them balanced with enough time for Dan to get 45 mins in the car, and finish out the race. No damage, no real wear on the car, success!

Sunday afternoon was the SARRC Sprint. I put on some fresh(er) tires and got ready to kick some butt. It was a fairly uneventful race, which on one hand was nice, but I would have like to have a little more of a fight. I drove hard for 5 laps and put some time on the rest of the field. After that I put it on cruise control and finished off the win. It was the first win (out of 2 races) in the new car. The last one I broke an axle with a 15 second lead on the last lap Brian Cembor also came out to watch and took my camera for a spin. He ended up with a few great pics of my car, as well as Kirk’s Golf. These are also the first “evidence” of the new car on track! As a photographer, I never get to take pictures of my OWN car.

On a sadder note, it was a weekend full of carnage for some other racers. Everything from spins, to wall hits, to totalled cars, to flips. I got lucky avoiding the bad luck and came out of the weekend with no damage, other then the scrapes on the front bumper from some bump drafting

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