Last year I replaced my front wheel bearings.

In my ignorance, I screwed up the rubber covers on the tie-rod balljoints.

I left them on, knowing they'd last for a while and bought some replacements
at Shucks.

I've been driving w/o a Wheel Alignment and so far it looks like I got the old
tie-rods back on w/o screwing up the alignment too bad...

I want to put the new tie-rod's on when the weather permits and was then going
to some tire shop for a front wheel alignment.

25 years ago I was in Argentina and was in a minor accident.

When they repaired the Citroen 3CV ( a pile of crap! ), they aligned the front
wheels with a straight wooden stick to the back wheels!

Would that work on a Geo Metro!?

Adjust the tie-rods until the front wheels align with the back wheels all in
a straight line using a straight stick or pipe...?

Just thought I'd ask....

DoctorBill

I have an alignment guage I puchased through JC Whitney and it works quite well. It measures the distance between the back of the tires and the front of the tires so you can adjust it to zero or there abouts.The instructions for its use should be available on harborfreight's website and you should be able to do the same with a stick or a string.

Doc, if you just removed the tie rod ends from the spindles and didn't break the nuts loose and adjust either tie rod ends in or out...your alignment should have stayed the same in the front from the previous settings...I've had to remove them (Tie rod ends) a couple times and never did another alignment! You haven't changed anything, Just removed the tie rod ends from the spindles and put them back in the same holes....Now if you install new tie rod ends or front struts, you'll need to get the car re-aligned. I assume you broke or tore the rubber boots to the tie rods ends using a pickle fork/hammer to get them out of the spindle....correct? If your tie rod ends are still good, just buy a new set of boots, use the pickle fork and hammer again to bust the tie rods ends loose from the spindles (No need to worry about the old boots now) toss the old boots out, install the new ones, re-assemble the tie rod ends to the spindles and fill the tie rod ends with new grease via the zerk fitting. Personally, the last time I planned on getting a 4 wheel alignment done on my Metro, I installed new front/rear struts and tierods ends 1st along with a new set of lower control arms.....All bought off E-Bay.....Dirt cheap! The actual "Real" balljoints in your Metro are formed into the lower control arms and are Non replaceable.....In other words, if you need a lower ball joint in your car, you have to replace the whole lower control arm to get it!......:screwy: Design! As far as doing your own alignment, I'd say find a good known "Non Chain Store" that been in biz for awhile and let them do it for about $50.00....You might end up spending more than that on a set of tires if you dont know what your doing.....My :2cents: .