I did mine without any real problem. 8,000 miles and my tire wear tells me I did a pretty good job.
First thing I did was get the car pefectly level. Pick the highest wheel and bring the other three to that height.
I avoided the trig for my castor and camber by removing the wheel. I used a length of tubing and some alcohol with red food dye to make sure everything was level, put a jack under the center support and removed one front tire. Lowered the car a bit and put a jack under the brake rotor hat, not the rotor itself. Jacked the car up to level again with the jack under the hub, took up most of the slack under the center jack for safety and then I could adjust without the wheel in the way.
I used a welders degree measure for my angles. I calibrated it with a spirit level, choosing which side was most accurate. Of the two I had on hand, one was off by a degree any way you turned it. The other one was perfect on one of the sides so I marked and used it. That gave me confidence of 1/2 degree accuracy. If you had a calibrated spirit level that would work even better.
For caster I made two equal lengh pieces of wire and attached them to a regular straight level sticking out in front of the brake rotor. With the Howe tall ball joints I could hook these in the top and and bottom ball joint which made life easier. Then I could hold my calibrated level up to the flat surface that was parallel to the plane between the two ball joints and read my caster angle. This one I went back and forth on for a long time, but I have checked it a few times since and it is suprisingly repeatable.
For camber, with the wheel off and the jack putting the suspension under the proper load and at the correct height, all I had to do was hold my calibrated angle level to the flat surface between the wheel studs and read off my camber angle. Also found this to be very repeatable.
I did this a few times on each side to make sure I was getting good numbers. I really only did it this way because I was tapped out and could not afford the Fasttraxx. The local shops have all proven their inability to align a Schwinn bicycle properly so they were never a consideration.
For toe in I smeared grease between two pieces of floor tile to allow smooth rotation of the wheels. Centered the wheel and wrapped a piece of string around all four wheels down low enough not to snag on the body. Toes the wheels in until the string touched the front and back of the same tire evenly, then went a bit past that point. I was aiming at close to 0 toe so that worked for me. Oh, make sure the steering wheel is where you want it and held tight or you will have your toe perfect but the wheel will be off badly one way or the other.
More trouble than it was worth? Probably, but it was easy and fairly quick once I had it all worked out in my head. More an interested in if it would work than anything, but if you have the money the Fasttraxx would be a nice thing to have around.
Now keep in mind I was using the SC&C's great Stage 2+ setup so I had easily adjustable upper "a" arms. May have been harder with shims, thankfully I don't know.
