Wheel Alignment Issues

[Ornery]

Just had my front end aligned by a local tire dealer for $50.00. When I went to pick it up, it was worse than when I brought it in! I turned around and took it back to them. They quickly put it on the machine again, made adjustments and sent me off with the car working no better. I'm about to call back and reschedule having them take another shot at it.

Question is, how many chances should they get, before I demand my money back? I need this done for a trip this weekend. Needs to be done by Saturday morning. There's almost no window of opportunity left for somebody else to do the work for me. What kind of excuses could they have? Issues with the tires themselves? They're virtually new General Ameri-G4S, which were on the car when I bought it in October 2002. It was in need of an alignment then, too.

After it's accident, I swapped my son's tires and wheels onto the car, thinking the car would be totaled. It ended up getting the body work done like that. The car was aligned perfectly when I got it back. After swapping my tires and wheels back on to it, it pulled to the right again, as it has done from day one. I'm going to swap the front wheels right now and see if that affects it. Is the tire store's alignment job poor, or might it be something on my end? Front end is tight.

 

[notfred]

Maybe you have a bent rim.

 

[jlee]

Your alignment shouldn't change when you change wheels..see if something is bent/otherwise messed up.

 

[Ornery]

SH|T! I swapped front wheels, and now it pulls left. Now what do I do?

 

[jlee]

Originally posted by: Ornery
SH|T! I swapped front wheels, and now it pulls left. Now what do I do?

Get new rims, or take yours to be fixed somewhere? Sounds like the rim itself is messed up.

 

[alkemyst]

I had a problem similar to that with a Dunlop SPS8000 set of tires. Alignment was dead on, wheels were straight, yet the car pulled terribly. Turned out a tire was made 'off center' or whatever and although it looked right it caused problems. They replaced all the tires and it was perfect. They later found it was only one bad tire out of the group.

 

[Ornery]

What do I do? I spend another $150.00, that's what.

I took it to Sears to have them adjust out the Generals, but it turns out they got a "Radial something-or-other" due to being driven so long with the bad tie rod. The tire treads were feathered on one edge, causing the pull. I had them mount up a new pair and they're tracking perfectly. Hey, I'm made of money, what the hell! :frown:

 

[JC]

I don't know that the tire wear caused the pull, but I've seen many radial tires that have caused a pull for whatever reason. You could maybe rotate the offending pair to the back of the vehicle until they wear out.

JC

 

[Ornery]

I was thinking about swapping front to back, but I had 205 70R 15s on the front and 215 70R 15s on the back. Yeah, the dealer I bought this thing from was a POS. Didn't take long to make the decision to opt for the new tires. I came close to buying a whole set of new Michelins, but I liked how quiet these Generals rode, and WTF, four new Michelins is a chunk of change!

Both tires showed "feathered toe angle wear", caused by misalignment. I think he mentioned this would cause a "radial pull" or "radial drift" or something like that. Either way, he couldn't adjust them out with that type of wear pattern on them. There was a confirmed bad outer tie rod, which I replaced before the alignment.

 

[Pacfanweb]

You had a tire pull. Very common. Glad to see you got new tires to fix it.