Do you do your own alignments?

I do my own alignments.

The short answer is that doing diy alignments well is a pain in the ass without the right tools.

I don't recommend for most people with most cars.

Tweaking front end alignment with a pair of $50 toe plates is no big deal. Just tweak it until the car drives straight and gives you the right toe measurement. There's a little back and forth iteration.

Messing with the rear is a lot more involved. Screw it up and you're driving sideways down the road. In order to do it correctly, you need to find square on the car. This is a lot more work for a home alignment than the actual alignment. You also really want a set of hub stands, because you need to do this with the suspension loaded. (Slip plates and platforms also work, but are still inconvenient and scary.)

I'm actually in the middle of this myself.

It'd doable but, as nrubenstein said, it requires the right tools especially in the rear.

You need to get a string alignment setup. You can make your own using jack stands and strings, but that's a pain when you have to put the car up and down and re-set all the strings every time. On top of that you need slip plates or you will have to roll the car back and forth after every adjustment to settle the suspension.


Camber is a little easier because you can use a camber angle gauge. However, your floor will almost always not be level so you need to make sure it's properly zeroed out on the floor.


Here are some videos if you want to attempt to tackle it. In short, you are going to need to spend at least $200 on a camber gauge, and then anywhere from $50 to $500 on a string alignement setup depending on whether you go with something crude like jack stands or something pre-made like SmartStrings.

I bought hub stands because it's virtually impossible to align a 993 without them. And you can't trust alignment shops to do it because they don't have the kinematic toe tool and don't understand which adjuster does what.

Strings work fine also. But whatever you do, you have to be able to get the car high enough in the air that you can get to the rear adjusters WITH the suspension loaded.

An engineering friend of mine in the past spent several weeks explaining how alignment shops were a scam and bought everything he needed to do the DIY job and how much money he'd save in the future.

By the end of it he was able to do it, but basically said never again.

I suspect waiting 2 weeks won't cause such significant wear to your tires that it will kill you. And make sure you've ruled out any other culprits like under/over inflation.

OP, there is a separat alignment thread above in the "sticky" area. Lots of nice info where people have different settings depending on usage. Take a look!

Cheers

Edit: Under the suspension section: https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=367003