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It's really too darned hot to work on cars this weekend. That said, we did get our RockAuto lower control arm and installed it Saturday.
Since our favorite alignment shop has expressed zero interest in working on nasty rallycross cars, we took the lead from the Honda website and did a string alignment to reset the toe. The string-method of attaching the string to the car works quite a bit easier than setting up the strings on the floor. In fact we left the car on the trailer and leveled the trailer using boards under the wheels on one side and then used the trailer tongue jack for the other leveling direction. Having the strings on the car makes rolling it back and forth between adjustments less worrisome since there is no relative motion between the strings and car.
The Honda site recommended using Harbor Freight suction cups to hold the strings, but with the high ride height there just wasn't anything suction cup friendly at the wheel hub level. (Plus we would have had to clean the mud off of the body and loose our "Dirt Cred".) We used light lumber and clamped it to the bottoms of the bumpers to hold the strings. Also, they recommended using elastic thread, but a rubber-band on one end of thin twine works just as well. (And slipping the rubber-band over the board makes adjusting the initial position really easy.)

Needless to say, the heat clouded my thinking late in the afternoon and I forgot that the front track is 15mm wider than the rear and didn't allow for that. If I had set up for zero toe I would have had 3/32" of total toe out due to that error. Since I was aiming for toe out, I now have just a little bit more. It can't possibly handle any worse than it did when the tie-rod was bent or when the lower control arm cracked (on separate occasions). I'm beginning to believe that at the 270K mile mark, this car that has lived through Pete's teen years and many track events and rallycrosses may be just about fatigued to death.

Naturally while working on the car we also discovered yet another broken motor mount. This time the passenger side mount rubber failed and then one of the aluminum mounting ears broke off. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Anchor Brand motor mounts are not that good. This brand is available as several parts stores and Rockauto. To replace this busted one I ordered the slightly more expensive Beck Arnley option from Rockauto - at least that one has a 12 month warranty; the Anchor unit is less than a year old and completely dead.
Regards,
Charlie G

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1998 BMW Z3
1987 BMW 325is
2000 BMW
1996 F250 Turbo Diesel