Cool DIY Wheel Alignment Tips!

Cool DIY Wheel Alignment Tips!

Getting car wheels aligned looks like a real pain from both time and money standpoint. This is why, most of the car owners think of wheel alignment as a rocket science and keep on paying hefty amounts of money to professional shops and work stations. However things are not as complicated as they seem.

If not a perfect alternative against going for traditional wheel alignment checks at repair stores; at least knowing how to DIY, can add a lot of value to your routine drives and help you keep a check on the quality of the work delivered by the technicians. From the concept and logical perspective, alignment is a pretty simple and straight-forward process, which can certainly be turned into an expertise with timely practice.

The part that tests your patience, the most, is that of setting up your alignment structure to get precisely consistent accuracy. Finding a perfectly flat surface to work from is also very critical. However these things get a lot easy if you plan to set it all up in your own garage or shop.

Aspects such as measuring and adjusting bump-steer, scaling and corner-weighinging in order to enhance the performance of your car may cost a bit more than a regular wheel alignment setup. So, if you do not mind shelling out a little more, you could as well go for a proper hi-tech setup and get more control over your car's health and performance.

Alignment of wheels not only helps improve the vehicle's performance over the streets, but also helps reduce accidental risks and improvements the lifespan of tires.

Here's a quick guide for how to do wheel alignment on a car and become an alignment-pro in no time.

Terms:

Before undertaking an actual alignment in hands, it makes a lot of sense to have basic information of some key terms associated with the wheel alignment process.

Toe:

Just as a pigeon-toe acts as a fulcrum and helps the pigeon get more flexibility and shock absorption features; car's wheels also rest on toes that have two main sub-components, Camber and Caster.

Camber:

The vertical toe-in. If it points slightly inwards from the top to bottom, it is called 'negative' camber and if it points slightly outwards, it is considered 'positive' camber. Positive or negative camber adjustments help in fine-tuning wheel movements as per driver's expectations.

Caster:

The angle on which the wheel pivots, when handled with the camber. 'Positive' caster facilitates wheels in being centered in orientation during the drives.

Adjusting camber and caster with basic tools in your garage might not be an easy thing to do. Here, taking assistance from the repair shops is a better choice here.

However, most frequently needed alignments are to do with the toe, which can easily be managed with the basic tool-kits having jacks, open-end wrenches, measuring tape and pocket knife.

Toe Alignment Figures

Getting the right numbers in hand, in order to address the toe alignment is very important. This numeric data is easily available at some library of motor manuals or popular repair guides. Since these measurements are car-specific, there is no universally applicable combination towards getting the best result. Reaching out to an official factory workshops is also another option, if you do not mind getting extra-technical and spending a little more. Toe alignment settings are often expressed in inches, millimeters or angular minutes. Based on these figures, you can get a clear picture of what to aim at during the alignment process.

Health analysis

Before starting the alignment process, you must make sure that the front wheel components are in good condition. After jacking the front wheels over the jack stand, check the following:

- Wheel bearings are properly placed
- Ball joints are healthy enough
- Steering gear box is in place

If there is no feeling of looseness in the wheels, both vertically and horizontally, they are good to go for the actual alignment process.

Alignment Process

Once all the other prerequisites are sorted out, take the following 5 steps:

Step 1

Spin each tyre and mark a line along the center of the tread with a pocketknife. If the circumference is all covered with tread block, make a support for the marking device in order to avoid the undesired loading effect.

Step 2

Set the car on ground and push a few times on each fender to move the suspension and allow the car to rest on its springs.

Step 3

Free the steering wheel and move the car forward by 10 feet or so, letting the steering wheel go on its own.

Step 4

With the help from a friend, measure the length between the lines in the front of the tires, at points in line with the spindles. Then measure the distance between the lines on the backs of tires for the same height. The difference in the two measurements is called toe-in or toe-out. Smaller number in front indicates toe-in and larger indications toe-out.

Step 5

Release the lock nuts on the tie-rod ends, next to both spindles and adjust it equally on each side to keep the steering wheel centered.

Finally, after you lock it all down, you may repeat this process to get double sure of the adjustments made in the car wheel alignments.

A Direct Path to Making Money Now!

A Direct Path to Making Money Now!

Here's a direct path to making money:

Create and sell your own information products.

There are lots of people who do not realize that they have particular knowledge that other people would be willing to pay for, and if that's the case maybe you could write a book that could make you money. Here are some examples of what I am talking about:

* You've found a way to lose weight which suits you, and you want to teach others to do the same.

* You know how to make the family budget go further.

* You know how to do craft work that you can sell in the local flea markets.

* You know how to use software such as Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and you can show others the basics.

* You know how to train Labradors, or any other breed of dog.

Those are just a few ideas ... but the sky is the limit!

Take time out to look at your interests and talents, and you'll soon discover that you actually know a quite a bit about a particular topic.

So, happens next?

Below is an overview of the entire process, but remember that most of it can be outsourced:

1) Research the market to ensure your idea is profitable. Do not create a product and then try to find someone to buy it. Instead, find a hungry market and give them a product that they're ALREADY buying.

2) Research the competition so you can develop a better product.

Once you've found that market, have a look at the competition. You do not want to put out an identical product; you want to deliver something better. And do not worry if there is a lot of competition, that just means there is a demand for the product

3) Create the product.

Now you have to create the product. Start with an outline and set your goal to write X amount of words per day and just start typing.

Quick Tip: to get an outline, download some PLR ​​products on your topic - the outline is already done for you.

Then keep typing until you finish - do not worry about any spelling or grammar, because you can do that once you've finished.

Quick Tip: If you do not like to type, then try a voice-to-text product like Dragon Naturally Speaking. In fact, that's rather how I am writing this article!

4) Put up a website which includes an opt-in form.

Next, you need to write the sales letter that sells your eBook and upload it to a squeeze page with your autoresponder on it to get your visitors to join your list. This is important, because the money is in your list - if you can sell one you can sell them two, and so on.

5) Set up a system to sell more products on the back end. You will notice that most successful marketers will try to get you to buy an additional, more expensive product before you get to download the product you actually bought. This is typically in the form of a one time offer. So, even as you are creating your very first product, you should also be thinking about how to develop your backend sales system, ways to sell additional products to your existing customers, through email, forums, blogs or links in the products they've already purchased.

So there it is - believe me it is not too hard. It's all boils down to a simple phrase, known by successful sellers from time immemorial.

Find a hungry market and give them what they want

Industry Use of the Word "Carwash" Versus "Car Wash" Considered

Industry Use of the Word "Carwash" Versus "Car Wash" Considered

There seems to be a bit of a discrepancy in the car washing sector as to where the carwashes the term "carwash" or "car wash" is most appropriate, that is to say or is it two-words. Okay so, since, I've been in the industry myself for nearly 30-years prior to retirement, I'd like to discuss this with you for a moment, and give you my take on this controversy.

Interestingly enough, the term "Carwash" has been used since the industry started, but many people use "car wash" online, and when they talk, so over the years, it seems to be either / or both. Unfortunately, using "car wash" also confuses those who are adamant about proper English, because it confuses the noun with the action to wash a car.

Neverheless, I can say this, I was instrumental in my career of modifying the English Language to use the term "car wash" as a verb and as a noun, and looking back, I rather like it that way. Now then, during most of my career I was on the mobile side of the industry.

No one in the mobile car washing industry uses the word "carwash" to describe their businesses, and most everyone in the traditional location based carwashes uses "carwash" to describe their operations. That's why I used the term way I did, although I bet you could find a half a dozen English Majors or professors in any given school who would not agree with my take on this or the realities of a changing and evolving industry.

So, that's why I think I may disagree with English Teachers, I've changed the term over the years, and I like my way better, even if you search the word online the search engines seem to pull up businesses, and does not seem to pull up very many car washing "action" type websites. The world has changed, so it's time that all the editors, English Teachers, and public get used to it, and change or get run over by the onslaught of actual users of the language, and look out now, because here comes China with more English speaking folks as a second language than the number of people in the US. India is next, so we are all going to have to deal with that.

When reading about this word in Wikipedia, it immediately announces that both uses of the word are common, and seems to indicate either are perfectly acceptable. I tend to agree with that, and would submit to you that when considering mobile businesses, you always should use two-words to describe it, and when talking about a fixed site location, you should generally or mostly use the one-worded version, which most in the industry would agree. Indeed, I hope this clears things up for you, please consider all this and think on it.

Making Money Online: 3 Steps to Success Revealed

Making Money Online: 3 Steps to Success Revealed

As you will probably know, the internet is scattered with Make-Money products of a very poor quality. Made by people who want to make quick dollars over the back of people who want to earn some honest money. I know more than 95% of all the people on the internet fail making money online. Would not you be one of the 5%? How?

1. Obviously, the competition in the 'Make Money Industry is huge. For example: When you type at the Google AdWords Keyword Tool: 'Make Money Online' you will see that those specific words are typed monthly 450.000 times. That's 5,4 million times each year, only on those 3 words.

To see what your up against in this industry notice that on Google, when typed all in title: Make Money Online, there are over 661.000 websites having these exact words in their website title. Due to this heavy competition that's why a lot of people will actually fail, or even go broke having success as an online entrepreneur.

2. You either want to make or promote an excellent product, but maybe more importantly promote your product in multiple ways. So you want to have knowledge of building a website, writing a blog, copywriting, e-mail-marketing etc. etc. Knowing the fact that the competition is killing and you have to be a expert in order to not fail. I want to share with you a step by step tutorial helping you survive and guarantee your success.

3. Do you want to become an expert in:

- Video marketing
- Website-building
- SEO
- Reverse Engineering
- Blogging
- E-mail-marketing
- etc., etc.

Take a look at this step-by-step- tutorial at my bio-box and become one of those 5% who will have success as an online entrepreneur.

Booting Linux From a Flash Drive For File Recovery

Booting Linux From a Flash Drive For File Recovery

After a long time we are back to talk about some more cool tech stuff you can do with a USB flash drive. Today's topic will focus on booting the Linux OS from a USB stick. The purpose for booting Linux from a USB drive, at least the purpose of this guide, is to recover files from a broken install of the windows OS or any other OS for that matter. We can also run virus scans from the Linux distro securely without infecting other PC's or having to boot the infected PC.

What you will need:

* A USB stick anywhere from 512mb to 2GB (depending on the distro)
* A main board capable of booting from a usb device.
* and about 15 minutes plus download time.

Software to be used:

* Latest stable version of UNetbootin

Step # 1: Prepare the USB Drive

Once you have all your materials together go ahead and plug the USB drive in and backup all files you may have on the disk.

Step # 2: Installing to The USB

Start up UNetbootin and select the following:

1. Use the first radio button "Distribution". This will download and install, automatically, the distro we want.
2. Pick SystemRescueCD. We are going with this because it is easy the ntfs file system driver comes prepackaged so no additional customization is required.
3. Next select your flash drive.
NOTE: Be sure to select your flash drive and not your windows partition or primary partition, 'cause if you do then you will destroy the currently installed OS.
4. Finally click "Ok".

UNetbootin options to select are shown in an image in the source article located at the link at the bottom of this article.

Step # 3: Configuring Bios

We will need to setup your computer to boot from the USB stick. To do so first you mother board will need to support this feature and second you will need to do some configuration.

1. Reboot your computer and hit "F2 or" del "depending on your mother board to enter BIOS config.
2. Search for the section labeled boot sequence, or named similarly. This will sometimes be filed under a separate section like advanced BIOS features, or similar.
3. Move removable or USB to the top of the list. If you do not see these options listed your mother board most likely does not support USB boot. Consult Google for more info on this.
4. Reboot the computer with the drive plugged in.

Step # 4: Booting Linux

We are going to boot into command line for this guide. There are options to load a GUI for those of you who tremble in the face of CLI. I must warm you though Command Line is by far easier and faster.

1. Once your computer passes post you will see the boot loader screen. Navigate to "VMLinuz64" and hit enter.

After a bunch of OK's on the screen and most likely 1 red FAIL you will be at the prompt "root @ sysresccd / root%". This would indicate a success.

Step # 5: Copying files from a windows partition onto an external hard disk.

For this you will need an external medium on which to move your files have this ready to receive your data. You can also use the usb stick which you booted from, if of course there is enough space on it.

1. First we will need to identify our drives. I will assume you have two storage devices plugged in one being the flash drive and the other your windows hard drive. Execute the command below:

fdisk -l | less This command will show you all the storage devices on your system. Use the down and up arrows to navigate the output as it may be larger than your screen. My output for this command is shown below:
Disk / dev / sda: 160.0 GB, 16000000000 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors / track, 19452 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xd0f4738c Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System / dev / sda1 * 1 19451 156240126 7 HPFS / NTFS Disk / dev / sdb: 2085 MB, 2085617664 bytes 2 heads, 63 sectors / track, 32329 cylinders Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00502bcd Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System / dev / sdb1 * 1 32330 2036720 6 FAT16 My device is 160GB NTFS partition. Knowing those two bits of info we can take an educated guess and say / dev / sda is our windows device.

NOTE: To exit this output screen press "q".

2. Mount the windows drive so that we can access the files on it. Run the mount command below:

mount / dev / sda / mnt / windows NOTE: you will need to replace "/ dev / sda" with your device found from the output of fdisk -l. It is likely that they will be the same.

3. Lets find out if we mounted the right device now. Run:

ls / mnt / windows This command will list the files and folders in a directory. If you see the tell program Program Files and WINDOWS directories it was successfully mounted.

4. Time to get our backup device out. Plug it in and wait a few seconds then run the fdisk command again:

fdisk -l Egypt
cat / proc / partitions You should see both devices you saw last time and now a new one should be there. Match the size of the device to yours and note the device location most likely / dev / sdc.

Mount this device to the pre-made backup folder using the mount command again:

mount / dev / sdc / mnt / backup 5. Now it is time to copy things from the old windows drive to the backup disk.

If you want to copy your entire windows drive to your back up drive run this command:

cp -R / mnt / windows / * / mnt / backup / YOUR_FOLDER_NAME If you plan on copy single files type the full file path and then the full destination path.

Additional Useful Commands:

* Sometimes a virus can infect the very first bit of code that is executed on your system the MBR (Master Boot Record). Luckily we can clean this up with relative ease in linux. Execute:

dd if = / dev / zero of = / dev / sdb bs = 512 count = 1 Remember to replace "/ dev / sdb" with your device cause if you miss and clean the wrong one you may have some issues.

* Maybe you do not have an external device to back stuff up but you have another computer with a network share. Well lets mount that network share so we can copy files to it. Create a mount point:

mkdir / mnt / network Mount the share:
mount -t smbfs // computername / folder / mnt / network -o username = user1, password = mypasshere Now you can copy and move files to the network share just like any other directory.

To mount a share without a password use:

mount -t smbfs // computername / folder / mnt / network Until Next Time.

A Unique Tool For Your Financial Future?

A Unique Tool For Your Financial Future?

The idea of ​​a company pension a thing of the past, even a government or union pension is no sure thing. The problem is that we are awash in debt. We have been spending more than we take in for decades. Our current economic plan is unsustainable. If you are counting on Social Security, then you are really living on the edge. It is no secret that Congress spent that money a long time ago. No matter where you look, the American economic system is living on borrowed time.

When we finally tip into the abyss is anyone's guess. I am not a fortune-teller, but I can tell you what will happen when we finally figure out nation is broke. The dollar will collapse it will soon be worthless overnight. There are plenty of historical examples of this happening. Argentina is a recent reminder of the catastrous repercussions of a sovereign default. The stock market will collapse. Imagine what it will be like if everyone wants their money out of stocks at the same time.

I can draw up a dozen plausible theories that can explain why we are heading towards an economic meltdown. How it happens is largely irrelevant. What matters are the steps that you take before the crash. What assets will be worth anything in a panic?

Some people like Gold as a hedge against chaos. I also like Gold, but is it really that useful? Gold is a potential substitute for cash. The problem with Gold is that it does not produce an income by itself. Gold will go up and down in value relative to any fiat currency, but it does not produce value.

I favor real estate as an investment. Real estate has created more millionaires than any other investment in American history. Real estate markets will go up and down just like any other investment. Where real estate outpaces other investments is that it produces an income without being consumed. You can own a rental house for decades and it will still be there producing cash. You can leverage your money to increase your purchasing power. All you need to buy real estate is a down payment not the entire amount. No other asset class combines the safety and long-term potential of real estate.

I am worried about the future of America. I am concerned for the future of my family. When I combined these two thoughts I started to look at real estate outside of the US market. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. There are a number of jurisprudence where the legal structure supports foreign ownership. I suggest that you look into buying property overseas as part of your retirement plan.

What to Look for in an Auto Body Shop

What to Look for in an Auto Body Shop

Without knowing what to look for, choosing a quality auto body shop is tough. It's important to select the right auto shop to ensure the vehicle is fixed correctly the first time. It's also the best way to make sure the shop is honest and reliable. There are many important features of a good shop, including an experienced staff and certificates. It can also help to read customer reviews before making a selection.

A Certified Shop

A good body shop is certified by the largest auto organization. Facilities that gain the approval of the organization have proven their abilities as certification is often a lengthy process. To become approved, an auto shop must demonstrate it has the latest equipment, qualified technicians and a proper facility. It must also show it offers above average training to its employees. Larger associations always collect feedback from prior customers as well before issuing an approval. Auto shops can also receive certification from parts manufacturers and organizations like Autobody Alliance, which requires the shop to meet certain qualifications.

Qualified and Experienced Staff

A good auto body shop has qualified staff with a number of certificates. Certification from ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) is especially important. ASE is a non-profit organization that offers certificates to automobile technicians that show proficiency in their trade. Technicians may also have certification from car manufacturers like GM, Chrysler, Toyota and Nissan, showing their knowledge and experience dealing with particular car brands. Some auto technicians also receive aftermarket training from Bendix, Moog, or NAPA. Most training requires a great deal of knowledge and experience and demonstrates a technician is a professional in their field.

Positive Customer Reviews

When possible, former clients should be consulted about their experience with the shop. Some resources to find reviews are online, making it easy to decide if a body shop has good feedback from the public. Reviews should mention that the vehicle was properly fixed the first time and work was completed in a timely fashion. Positive reviews should also discuss whether a warranty was offered by the body shop and if the facility was clean and orderly. A facility that has the approval of a large automobile association has shown a history of positive feedback from customers, although it's always a good idea to check into a shop as much as possible.

Accepts All Insurance

Another important aspect of a good body shop is its acceptance of all forms on insurance. An auto body shop that accepts all insurance providers underscores it has experience working with insurance companies to settle claims quickly. A shop that is hesitant to accept major insurance providers is a red flag that something may be wrong. This is also a matter of convenience and makes it easier for the vehicle owner to select a shop they feel comfortable with.

Selecting the right auto body shop requires a bit of patience and consideration. For example, choosing the first shop available can be a disaster if the employees are not trained properly. A good auto shop is clean and up-to-date with a friendly and knowledgeable staff. The shop should have positive reviews and a range of certificates for both the facility and technicians. It should also accept all forms of insurance, making repairs easy and convenient.