I went for an alignment this saturday and I ended up waiting from 9:30am till 2:30pm and when i got in my car to drive away the alignment was worse than it was before i brougth it in!!! I told them ahead of time that I had my car dropped (HR's) and that the tire size is different from stock. My tires are 235/45/17 opposed to stock which was 225/50/17.

Anyways...they f*cked it up and I demanded a refund (which I got).
The car doesn't pull to the right anymore but the sterring wheel is tilted to the left when the car is going straight.

Oh by the way it was done at R&S Strauss and I live in NYC.
The guy suggested that I go to a performance shop to get the alignment done. He said that cuz I lowered the car and changed the size of the tire that they would not be able to do it (after letting me wait 5 hours). Is this guy full of **** or do i really need to go to a performance shop?

 

OMG what a punk!!! i had 245/45/17 on my car with eibachs and NTB did it no problem!!! go to a different place!! the only reason u would go to a performance shop to do alignment is if have adjustable camber plates that need to be adjusted!! wow!!!

will

 

Any alignment shop should be able to align your car. Just because it is lowered doesn't mean the specs are different. However, the Maxima has toe adjustments only so a lowered car might require camber plates to maintain the correct geometry. This probably is best handled by a performance shop because they would have experience in this area. BTW: never goto Strauss for an alignment, I wouldn't trust them for an oil change.

 

What did they reset? Just toe?

Actually, alignment isn't all that mysterious if you've got some idea what you're trying to measure and how to measure it. I've done all of mine right in my own driveway with less than $20 worth of equipment.

This is at least the third post concerning alignments I've seen today. Are we all coming down with cases of pothole-hit-itis?

Norm

 

f*cking NYC roads

 

I knew it!!!

those dumb c*ck sucker motherf*cker bastard pieces of sh*ts!!!

It's bad enough i gotta work all week....then they make me waste
nearly an entire day (one of my days off no less).

f*cking scumbags.


anyways.....now that I've vented......thanks for all the info!

Now I don't feel guilty for smashing in that mechanics front windshield on his piece of sh*t civic!!!
for the last day or two I've been wondering if he was telling me the truth but now I feel VINDICATED......dumb piece of f*cking sh*t.

HAHAHA!!

 

I swear, I cant stand incompetent mechanics! Just had my TCM and solenoid replaced, and less than 12 days later, My tranny is shot. The major ****er is how these people are employed with non real skill.

BTW, Which R&S strauss did you go to?

GC

 

R&S Strauss on Staten Island...Forest Ave....

 

No, the guy is full of $hit! The alignment is not done by the tire position. It is done by the axle. Even the new Wolf Laser guides tell you exactly what to do and what to set. But, don’t feel bad. I had the same problems with my car. Only, the shop left my tow bolts loose along with my steering wheel slightly off to one side.

Either take it to the dealer or find a performance shop that handles lowered/raised vehicles and trucks. They usually know what they are doing.


ADMAN

 

How do you do an alignment job by yourself? ie. what are the tools you need and how do you measure the specs? Which bolts do you turn to make it happen?

thanks...

 

First you need a flat, level place to set up. Inflate your tires to whatever pressures you intend to normally use. Then you need a level of some sort and a small scale that reads to 1/32" or finer. I've found that a carpenter's combination square with the little bubble level in it works OK, though I've recently fabricated something a little fancier that uses an easier-to-read dial indicator.

To measure camber, set one end of the square against the wheel with the bubble in the middle (I use the wheel rather than the tire sidewall to eliminate error due to tire sidewall irregularities, raised letters, bulge at the bottom, etc.). Make sure that the scale is vertical looking at it from the side and that nothing is hitting the scale anywhere but at the one end. Measure the gap at the other end and compute the angle (for a 12" scale, each 1/32" of gap is equal to 0.15 degree). Gap at the top is negative camber, gap at the bottom is positive.

Caster can be determined from the difference between camber measurements with the wheels steered the same amount right and then left. If you can get 30 degrees of steering each way, it's 1.0 times the algebraic difference between those camber measurements. If you can't get 30, then use 14.5 degrees of steering each way and caster will equal 2.0 times the camber difference. You can make a simple jig from strips of wood or metal to make steering to those angles easier and more accurate.

For toe, set up a parallel string along each side of the car (parallel to the car centerline, actually) and measure the distances to each front wheel at its front and back edge. The differences on each side can either be converted into toe angles and added (algebraically) to give a total toe angle. Alternatively these differences can be scaled up to the tire diameter (and again added algebraically) for comparison against a total "inch" toe spec.

Toe is corrected by adjusting the tierods.

Caster and camber adjustment methods vary considerably, but with strut suspensions you basically move the tops of the struts around to change these settings. I'll keep this part kind of general since I haven't yet needed to adjust our Max's alignment. Perhaps somebody who either has watched it done or done it themself can provide some more specific information here. Typically for OE you unbolt the top of the strut and rotate it through a number of fixed positions that permit the bolts to line up with the holes. With aftermarket caster/camber plates you have a wider range and finer control of adjustments and can slide the tops of the struts in/out and back/forward for camber and caster respectively.

Norm

 

dude..
i don't trust anyone with alignments because I used to work in a shop out in Huntington, NY. I live in floral park, near the queens border and I goto the Pep Boys in Elmont. My father knows the guy there and he aligned my POS Grand Am (after I installed struts) to spec! Drives straight but for the fact that this car was in an accident, its never the same. But he showed me a print out of the car's BEFORE and AFTER specs. Now I know that this guy was not a hoax and did his job.

Andy

p.s. I hate R&S Strauss. Bunch of no brainer mechanics in there who want to get paid for doing nothing. Never ever go in there again. They went to check on a flat for my tire...took 1 hour?!?!? nobody else was in the bays!

 

whoa....you're hard core if you're able to do a good alignment job with those tools and such tight tolerances. thanks for the info! You said that adjusting the camber is a matter of unbolting the strut assembly and turning it to different positions, but I don't see how that would work on my 95 because there is does not seem to be anything to adjust or vary to change the camber.

any other thoughts?
thanks!

 

When I'm being fussy I get out the reading glasses and work to 1/64ths or better. A couple of months ago I made a caster/camber gauge for about $25 (it uses a dial indicator that I already had for engine work) that offers better repeatability for camber measurements (within 0.05 degrees) and is much easier to read than the scale. RE flatness: one section of my driveway has 1/16 degree of slope side to side and 3/4" slope front to back over 110" or so, as determined by a laser level. And some day I'll benchmark my readings against the machine in the shop where my son in law works.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not exactly sure what mechanism may be available to adjust camber on a Max, but on my Mazda 626 with 4-bolt struts you unbolt the strut, drop the studs out of the holes, and turn the strut in 90 degree increments to simultaneously adjust caster and camber. What's happening there is that the center of the strut is offset slightly from the center of the strut bolt pattern and as you rotate it the upper strut centerline (the upper "pivot") is moving in a small circle about the bolt pattern center which is fixed. In 1/2 degree increments of caster/camber on the 626 if I remember it right. Eventually I'll get the Max's shop manual and see if it is adjustable in similar fashion (I suspect that it might be).

If you need greater adjustment that's what caster-camber plates are for. And there's at least two other ways to do it, although they would probably raise some questions/disputes if you ever needed warranty work done that was related to steering & suspension.

Norm