Lotus Elise S1 Toe - (Alignment Part 3)

This video shows you how to adjust the toe on a 1997 Lotus Elise Series 1. It's much faster and easier to set up than I was expecting with a few inexpensive items that you probably already have at home.
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All DIY repairs or modifications you perform to your car are made at your own risk. Sometimes, even if you've done everything the right way, you can destroy or damage one or more things on your car. You must understand this, but by leveraging knowledge and patience, the probability of encountering one or more problems can be reduced.
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[@HelpMeDIY]

⁠ yes I have a separate video on the ride height as the first step and I mentioned adding the weights in the video 😉🍻

[@warrenlucier5796]

Knowing the thread pitch will help with figuring the turn(s) amount for adjustment. The plate adjustment method will work if the alignment is fairly close or you get one side of the car squared up then you can adjust the other side and finish the 1st side to spec; hope this helped. Since you used steel conduit, a magnet will keep them in place easier than tape will. I haven't looked into the bearing plates (cost), but you might be able to make them up for future use. The drive will be an Oh Yeah this is great!

[@HelpMeDIY]

+@warrenlucier5796 thanks for the extra info! 🍻

[@drew699]

Great work. Thanks for posting. Ultimately, I’m intrigued to know whether the car feels different ie. better & overall what your opinion on Elise ownership is in terms of how enjoyable the car is to drive and own, given the US had to wait 25years to buy them etc? Thanks.

[@HelpMeDIY]

+@drew699 thanks! The car feels much more responsive now… less steering input needed. Overall the car kind of feels “old”. Like I don’t want to drive it to hard in fear of breaking something 😆. Even though that probably wouldn’t happen. Needs a little more power. Maybe I can do something about that one day…

[@pjay3028]

You can't lift your car and drop it back down onto those rubber chocks because the wheels will not settle back to their correct position due to friction. I imagine that's why you had such unbelievable amounts of toe on the front wheel. You have to have a "frictionless" plate under each tyre if you're going to lift it or adjust it the way you did. This allows the wheels to go back to their normal static geometry as they travel through the suspension travel when you drop the car back down. The suspension just binds up doing it like you did. You can buy special plates that are free to travel left/right/forward/backward to put under each tyre to achieve this. You will never get accurate results otherwise. I'm probably not making much sense, but there's plenty of info about this if you look. I would also suggest that measuring with a ruler to the nearest millimetre (or even half a millimetre) is just not accurate enough, Lotus specify 0.1mm for a reason! Maybe invest in a micrometer?

[@HelpMeDIY]

+@pjay3028 yes that makes sense. Best to roll the car or use those plates. The “chocks” I was using are smooth plastic though, not rubber, so they don’t bind THAT badly, but point taken. Thanks! 🍻

[@pjay3028]

I think the plates I'm talking about are called turntables, but I don't think the cheap ones are good enough because they only turn, they don't allow the movement I'm talking about to get around lifting and dropping the car.

[@pjay3028]

@@HelpMeDIY the accuracy of the measurements you need to achieve to get the toe correct is mind boggling. You are literally talking down to 0.1mm or it's not really worth doing in the first place. Any friction at all wrecks it completely. The amount of toe you measured at the front wheel was off the scale. If you've driven it like that, and didn't notice anything wrong, then something was wrong with what you did, unless it was the steering wheel that had moved. I can only repeat that accuracy is critical and anything much more than a couple of millimeters out would be steering you off the road. I do my toe and I use a micrometer and I'm not happy with more than +/-0.05mm accuracy!

[@pjay3028]

I've just worked out that 98mm-77mm=21mm of measured toe at the front wheel and that is the equivalent of having the steering wheel turned about 45 degrees!

[@HelpMeDIY]

it was definitely visually obvious! If you saw my suspension upgrade videos you saw that I replaced the steering rod with a new one that was a different length so I just had to guess how to install it before the alignment 😂