Austin J2 wheel tracking

[crankedup5]

I had a couple of new steering ball joints on my campervan, unfortunately the garage that fitted them were unable to adjust the tracking, they couldn’t fit the equipment to do so.
How did mechanics do tracking in the ‘good old days’? I’m hoping to find an old school garage that can do the job for me.

[daveenty]

Stuff of that age, and I'm ashamed to say that I used to work on it, was usually tracked using simple gauges such as those pictured below which rested on the wheel rim and the toe in/out was read via a lens onto a mirror. A lot of old school garages still have these though they're seldom used now due to modern stuff being easier to use and probably more accurate.

The adjustment was just made by altering the length of the outer track rods, after they'd had a long soak in penetrating fluid.

Any decent tyre place should still be able to do this for you.

Tracking gauges: -

Edited by daveenty on Wednesday 15th March 15:38

[E-bmw]

First time I ever had it done (around 1980) was at a proper garage & he had a small turntable set in the floor that you drove very slowly over & it showed where adjustments were required, ne equipment fitted at all on the car.

[droopsnoot]

I've got a Gunsons "Trackrite" that I got from a car boot sale for a couple of quid. Drive the car over it and it will show whether the tracking is in tolerance. I've got a set of the gauges shown in the picture above (I think they're known as Dunlop tracking gauges) but I've never tried them. They're still in the Demon Tweeks catalogue, so not entirely redundant - maybe handy if a portable solution is needed.

There's also a way of doing it with bits of string, but I've never tried that.

Whereabouts in the country are you?

[Dogwatch]

If the garage had done a conscientious job in changing the ball joints the tracking shouldn’t be far off anyway.

[TwinKam]

Dogwatch said:

If the garage had done a conscientious job in changing the ball joints the tracking shouldn’t be far off anyway.

..that all depends on whether it was correct beforehand! And manufacturing tolerance differences between the old and the new rod-ends can lead to surprising toe differences in spite of careful 'counting off' and 'counting on', and then there's the matter of slop in the old joint...
No way to avoid the fact that alignment needs checking (and probably adjusting) after any steering/ suspension part is renewed.
Old school 'Dunlop gauges' will be plenty accurate enough on a J2 with a top speed of what... 45mph on a good day? ...some of the computerised set-ups struggle to recognise old/oddball stuff, can't work without a Reg. No., nor simply provide raw data...

[crankedup5]

Thanks for replies and comments, time for me to phone around some garages and hope.

[tonyvid]

Being a child of the 70s and a home mechanic of the 80s, we used to do it this way with a simple adjustable bar, a slider pointer and calibrated markings on it to measure the difference between the 3 and 9 o'clock positions in the inside edge of the wheel - probably close enough for an Austin of any era.

https://www.howacarworks.com/steering/setting-the-...

[crankedup5]

tonyvid said:

Being a child of the 70s and a home mechanic of the 80s, we used to do it this way with a simple adjustable bar, a slider pointer and calibrated markings on it to measure the difference between the 3 and 9 o'clock positions in the inside edge of the wheel - probably close enough for an Austin of any era.

https://www.howacarworks.com/steering/setting-the-...

Thanks, have to say I was surprised that the garage that fitted the ball joints didn’t have the kit to do the tracking, hey ho I expect that they chucked away the old gear when the laser marlarky took over.