[bmw] wheel alignment - toe-in

[john <j.s.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(E30 '89 325i)
I've been trying to read up a little on toe-in and wheel alignment generally after the local garage
totally ruined my front wheel toe-in for "free". (It a long story so won't go into it now).
Anyway, can someone here explain this to me:-

The laser aligment kit many shops use these days (from what I can find out), "project" the alignmnet
of the rear wheels forward and use these projections to set the toe-in of the front wheels. This
makes (or rather made) sense to me until I saw that on the E30 anyway the REAR wheels also have a
slight toe-in angle (some 26' of arc). A bit of trig shows that projecting 26' forward some 2600 mm
(to the front wheels) gives approx 9mm divergence! If this is true, how can the front wheels possibly
be set from that as the angle already exceeds the toe-in for the front wheels - apart from being out
of true in the first place by a shift due to this projection?

I must have completely misunderstood how it *is* done in practice. I'd appreciate knowing how it is
done.
Thanks.
-John
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