Wheel alignment is crucial to any car, not just modified or fast Fords. As such, it often gets overlooked and doesn’t always receive the care and attention it deserves.
Let’s look at it in simple terms: your tyres are the only contact point between the car and the road. The grip they have with the road is the only thing that allows the car to turn, accelerate or brake. That’s why you should never skimp on fitting decent tyres to any car (more of that on page 64), let alone a performance or tuned one.
As such, optimising the way those tyres interact with the road is, unsurprisingly, a key area to getting the best possible performance out of your car.
There are three main areas you can adjust to tune the tyre alignment: camber, toe and caster. Most of these parameters are adjustable even on a standard car, but start adding some upgraded hardware such as fancy coilovers with adjustable top-mounts, camber bolts and adjustable control arms, and you can really tweak things to find the optimum settings for you and your Ford.
To accurately measure any of these, though, you’ll need either a laser alignment rig (as often found in many tyre shops and garages) or to use the string and plum line method, known affectionately by
