Doing my own wheel alignment is looking alot better right about now...

Alright, so after doing my longtubes (by dropping the "K" and such) my steering wheel is off a bit to the right, so I figure, "Hey, I'll take up some peoples suggestions and go to Firestone and do the "alignment for life" deal!" Well I get there for my appointment a few minutes early, they get the car in fine - well no, actually the "tech" couldn't figure out how to turn the car on...and I had to go out and push the clutch all the way to the floor for him lol - anyway, 55 minutes pass and they seem ready to gimme my car back. I walk up there, start to pay, then the guy ringing me up notices that they put a note on the bill which read something to the effect of "Needs tire rotation, call speedshop for hopped up suspension alignment." It was frustrating as hell! They have my car for nearly an hour and just figured out that they "can't" align it! I talk to the manager and he says, and I quote "Your parts are throwing off our machine, it can't read anything so whenever it runs it comes out all 'funky'."

At this point I leave a little discouraged, thinking I'll need to spend another $150-$200 to have a local race shop do a full alignment (great alignment, crappy cost ) My friend suggests we try a high-end import shop which was the only place which correctly diagnosed some troubles he had with his last car and see what they have to say. Going into the place it looks like a pretty classy joint, very clean, crazy unique store front, etc... but then I see the royal douche behind the desk! Right then I knew it wasn't gonna happen with this place. So I get to asking about alignments and how Firestone couldn't/wouldn't do it, then I say "They gave me some excuse about how their machine couldn't do it," to which he replies "It's because of your parts, they can't put it into spec." "No no no no no!" I say to him, "My car was in spec before I rebuilt the suspension, but it's still at the same ride height, and physically it's a stock geometry car, no aftermarket control arms, subframes, K-member, etc." Now this is where the guy got me pissed... "I don't think you're understanding what I'm telling you. You changed the car, so it can't be in spec!" I try to tell him otherwise but it's no use, I didn't wanna do business with such an A-hole anyway.

Oh yeah, then to top it off, while walking out of the joint I mutter to my friend "What a :BADWORDING: :BADWORD: guy!" Haha, luckily senor moron heard me and storms up from his chair and walks through the garage out to the front of the business and starts to shout at me as I drive off.... Mmm, I do believe that is considered customer harrassment, as my friend and I did purchase some M&M's in the vending machine before getting any "service" - I could always file a complaint with the BBB just to jerk them around I guess

I'm really starting to feel discouraged at this point... But alas, there is one more "local" shop to checkout....

As soon as I walked in this last joint I knew it was going to workout. On the walls there were pictures of the owner, a few staffers and others with their tricked Vettes, Mustangs, and Maros. The nice old lady at the desk called in the head service guy, I told him what I had done to the car and he seemed pretty cool with it, told me he would for sure align it - and best of all gave me some damn respect for knowing what I was talking about (perhaps the whole "Yeah, I kinda built the car by myself" sunk in with this guy lol).

It's STILL going to take till next Monday to get it done, but atleast it is I guess! Going to all the shops, calling atleast 5 others, and dealing with more jackasses in one day than I thought possible has really leaned me back towards saving up for a quality alignment tool set as I was previously planning. Also a friend of mine is planning to buy a set of scales for his street/race car, too, so hopefully I'll be having the car corner weighted for FREE soon as well

Anybody else have problems with moron alignment shops simply not listening? I mean...don't these places WANT our money??? All of the trouble I've had really makes no sense to me - WHY is it such a big deal just to get my wheels aligned!?!?!

As long as your tires wear OK, your gas mileage is OK, your steering wheel is clocked OK, and you have no vibrations/pulls then eyeballing works I guess!

But, if you're gonna be drag racing, enjoy spirited driving, or autocross you GOTTA have your junk in spec (or adjusted for each sort of event, etc.)

EagleAutosports said:

I'm a chassis and alignment specialist and can tell you the guy just didn't know how to handle the aftermarket parts you installed. Obviously he had no experience with anything other than stock. The comment about it has to be out of spec was right because things change when they're moved but he still should've been able to get it back in range. The machines are calibrated only to stock specs and anything that's modified scares some places. Plus, since it was a Firestone dealer, they have different regulations to go by. But they should've been up front with you if they couldn't do it or maybe it was more like they didn't want to touch it because it wasn't stock.

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Yeah, the guy at firestone also said to me "We could get it into spec, but it wouldn't be spec for your car because you changed it," which is absolutely retarded and makes no sense lol. They really really wanted my money before they were just gonna say "Sorry, can't do it," and I think they wanted to tamper with my parts also !paranoid!

svttech76 said:

Most shops don't want to touch a modded suspension.. hell many shops hate doing alignments for performance cars because we tend to be PICKY..

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:Word:

Little update - So I dropped the car off at the last shop I went to (the one where they would actually touch it lol) and they got it into spec real easy! However, they did comment that my front tires are worn to crap - so now I need some new tires which I asked about in THIS thread if anybody has any suggestions!