dhall_polo
Well Known Member
This seemed a pretty cool way to align the wheel pants, so thought I'd share...
I've had a laser level for years, and it never really came in handy. I always just found that strings, bobs, and levels worked better for whatever tasks were at hand. Finally with the wheel pants, this tool really helped. You're supposed to align the wheel pant vertically through the center of the tire, but the tire is tilted with the weight off. So the only way really to do that is by eyeballing it, unless you've got a laser. With the laser lined up to paint a line straight back and bisecting the tire, you can quickly align the wheel paint in two dimensions. Then you can fix the 3rd dimension by checking heighth alignment fore and aft.
We also happened to have some 'decorative' rope lighting around the house. It became a shop tool today. By wrapping the rope light around the tire inside the wheel paint, I got good backlighting for drilling the pant to the brackets.
Between the laser, the rope lights, and the green pants, I had a nice Christmas show in the shop. Ah, 'tis the season.
For those soon to work this stage, more detail on this stage here.
I've had a laser level for years, and it never really came in handy. I always just found that strings, bobs, and levels worked better for whatever tasks were at hand. Finally with the wheel pants, this tool really helped. You're supposed to align the wheel pant vertically through the center of the tire, but the tire is tilted with the weight off. So the only way really to do that is by eyeballing it, unless you've got a laser. With the laser lined up to paint a line straight back and bisecting the tire, you can quickly align the wheel paint in two dimensions. Then you can fix the 3rd dimension by checking heighth alignment fore and aft.
We also happened to have some 'decorative' rope lighting around the house. It became a shop tool today. By wrapping the rope light around the tire inside the wheel paint, I got good backlighting for drilling the pant to the brackets.
Between the laser, the rope lights, and the green pants, I had a nice Christmas show in the shop. Ah, 'tis the season.
For those soon to work this stage, more detail on this stage here.
