front end alignment
You really don't seem to get it, what if the tech decided to grab the grease gun & be "Harry Helpful", then the owner flipped out 'cause he had His own "special grease"
waiting at home
Exactly. The "special grease" thing is completely relevant. On all of my cars all of the bushings are polyurethane, so, they get poly grease. Of course, the ball joints and tie rod ends do not, they get the regular old standard grease. So yeah, if I took my car to an alignment shop and found that some mouth breathing "alignment tech" had used standard grease on
all the grease fittings in the front end I would be
PISSED. Because it would mean pulling all of my poly bushings and cleaning the standard grease out of them.
I do all my own alignments though, bought the turntables, slip plates, caster/camber gauge, toe plates, etc. There was a dirt track guy that worked at one of the shops near me and he was great, but once he left I got tired of explaining why the factory alignment numbers in the computer are completely wrong and why they should use the "custom" numbers I gave them. I mean, bias ply's vs. radials, 100% aftermarket or modified suspension pieces, why would you use factory numbers? That and there was an inverse relationship between the amount of aftermarket suspension pieces I installed and the number of shops willing to even touch the suspension on my cars. The more aftermarket parts I put into the suspension the fewer shops would even agree to work on the cars, let alone guarantee anything. So I tracked down all the stuff I needed bit by bit (used stuff so I could afford it all) until I had everything. Now I don't have to worry about it, I set up my own alignments. If I really want to make sure I got it right I drive it down and just have a shop check my alignment on the rack to make sure the bubble gauges I use jive with the laser rack.
