What is The Best Trick To Do Wheel Alignment?

clipped from bikepoint.com.au

TRICKS
The trick is to get a ball of twine, or you can do this exercise if you can somehow find two straight edges that are longer than the bike. The latter is a big call, so we'll stick with the string method - yep, this is ye olde "stringlining", of which you may have heard your mates speak.

Usually this is easiest with the bike on the sidestand (the centrestand usually gets in the way) and propped up as close as possible to vertical. A race stand is often a good option.

Wrap the string around the front of the front wheel, as high as possible without snagging fairings and associated under-bike hardware when you run each end of the twine under the machine. The pics will give you the idea.

clipped from bikepoint.com.au

From there the plan is to get the front wheel straight, and then the rear wheel adjusted so it is too. What you want to end up with is what we've shown in the main diagram - where the distances "A" (the gap between the string and the edge of the tyre) and "B" (ditto) on the trailing edge of the front wheel are equal to each other; And the distances "A" and "B" on the trailing edge of the back wheel are equal to each other. (Note: the A/B up front does not have to match A/B on the back.)

This is often best done with two people, one working on each end of the bike. It is a great help to have oil cans/bricks/jackstands to hold the loose ends of the string for you while you fiddle.

Getting it all lined up will be a bit of a fiddle, but simple enough assuming the bike is straight. The exact method isn't critical, so long as you end up with a result that looks like our diagram.

clipped from bikepoint.com.au

If you cannot get them to align, it is likely the frame isn't straight, or the bike might even have been designed with the rear wheel offset from the front. (Chassis experts at Bob Martin Engineering tell us that some BMW GS models have an offset.)