need alignment help!
"Close enough?" HELL YOU CAN ALIGN IT YOURSELF. There are plenty of stories on here about poor alignment shops who cannot comprehend or "won't" align these cars properly.
There is about 10 tons of "stuff" on the internet about DIY alignment. I did it and I'm old. It hurts. It's painful. But I did it.
Del you're my hero. :D :thumbup:
While I have most of the tools you listed, and have done my own alignments, you did a
GREAT job of explaining everything in your post.
The number of alignment shops out there that actually know how to align these cars is dwindling by the day. I had a guy that worked at a major chain that actually knew what he was doing, but he moved on. Most places I have to explain to the techs how to make adjustments. Which always baffles me, these cars are SUPER easy to adjust with the camber bolts, easier than a lot of cars out there that use shims etc. Now, if you have adjustable UCA's things are a little more entertaining when you're adjusting the lengths of the UCA legs, but once that's done it's right back to the camber bolts.
I basically do my alignments myself now. I just take them to the local shop to have them checked on the rack. Camber and toe are pretty easy since they're done static with nothing moving and are measured directly. Caster can be a little more difficult to measure correctly since you have to move the wheels accurately to get the calculations right. Which is why I still usually get mine checked on the rack, but the last couple of times I've done this the changes that were needed were minimal at best. Basically, the trip to the rack was overkill, I could have driven it forever without tire wear or handling issues.
Once you've done a few it gets pretty easy, and once you know the "baseline" for your car you can make adjustments on your own.
