Wheel Alignments... What ever happened to Old School??

[robmacca]

Well.....

We have only recently fitted some new shoes under the missus Prado and part of the deal included a Wheel Alignment (part of the leaseplan package). All good at this point..... After the Missus had driven it about a 1000kms I went for a drive and noticed some tyre noise coming from the tyres which shouldn't be the case with new A/T's.... When I got home, I had a quick check of the tread & noticed a slight bit of "feathering" from the inside edge. This had me concerned, so I booked the Car into a mates Steering Specialist workshop where I get all my cars done so he could check out the alignment that the Bridgestone Tyre shop had done. Now, my mate had done his apprenticeship long time ago as a front end specialist which is no longer available as a apprenticeship & hasn't been for years. When he put it on the machine, he said to me that it's out a bit and when was my last wheel alignment. I told him when I bought the tyres some 3wks ago. He informed that I was lucky that I bought it in otherwise I would have severely worn my new tyres by the time we would have gotten home from our outback trip. I asked how they could get it so wrong? He informed me that they would have just been setting it the recommended factory settings, same as all Car Manufacturers would do.... He went on to inform me that it's just not that simple & there's a lot more to it than that....

Now, he's the last of the Old School trained "Front End Specialists" that I know of around our area and when he retires, all that knowledge & skill that he has will be lost... He even get's some of the "so-called" suspension professionals coming to him when they can't solve front end issues....

Question.... What have others found with their local tyre people when it comes to wheel alignments? I now know not to trust the likes of Bridgestone/Bobjane, etc when it comes to my car, but what about the likes of Pedders, Fulcrums, etc ??

A good wheel alignment could save u 100's of dollars in the life of your tyres & I will gladly pay $65 per year or 2 to get good life from my tyres.....especially when the tyres are $300+ per tyre

BTW.... What pressure do people run in their tyres?? I'm running around 40psi in the front & 36>40psi in the rear

plus..... does anyone know of a good wheel alignment place in Brisbane.......perferably on the nth side? Currently I go to Caboolture for my wheel alignments, but would be nice to know of other places when my mate retires from his business

 

[Lil_Menace]

Mate i've found that any of the Goodyear mobs do very good alignments, The one at the bottom of Moss st did mine after doing the torsion bars right up and having the front end apart. And just had my new Wranglers fitted today with a free alignment so time will tell with that. As for pressures i run 40psi all round with the older wranglers and i managed to get almost 3 years out of them.

 

[biggazza]

I use pedders maroochydore for my falcon,very good at there work,have to agree with you about B.J.Tmart never again,Im due for new feet on the navara so I'll take it there. But i think it just depends from shop to shop if they have people like your mate that really know what there doing. I run 36- 40 in my tyres, gazza.

 

[scooba_285]

bridgestone here are the only ones who can get my nav right

 

[qqc d22]

I went to five different shops with my old rodeo to get a wheel alignment to fix camber after i lifted it everyone had a go charged like a wounded bull and all of them said they couldnt change the angle and just added heaps of toe in to try and make the tyres wear at same level but means they wear a lot quicker. always chewed out the inside edge anyway. a week before i sold it meet a bloke who runs his own small tyre shop. one man show he said bring it in ill have a look. got it nearly perfect he said it had run out of adjustment due to being lifted so high but the tyres actually sat flat on the road before that it sat on the inner edge you could stick your fingers probly 2" under the outside of the tyre. goes to show but how useless the big name shops are

 

[00dave]

Well.....

We have only recently fitted some new shoes under the missus Prado and part of the deal included a Wheel Alignment (part of the leaseplan package). All good at this point..... After the Missus had driven it about a 1000kms I went for a drive and noticed some tyre noise coming from the tyres which shouldn't be the case with new A/T's.... When I got home, I had a quick check of the tread & noticed a slight bit of "feathering" from the inside edge. This had me concerned, so I booked the Car into a mates Steering Specialist workshop where I get all my cars done so he could check out the alignment that the Bridgestone Tyre shop had done. Now, my mate had done his apprenticeship long time ago as a front end specialist which is no longer available as a apprenticeship & hasn't been for years. When he put it on the machine, he said to me that it's out a bit and when was my last wheel alignment. I told him when I bought the tyres some 3wks ago. He informed that I was lucky that I bought it in otherwise I would have severely worn my new tyres by the time we would have gotten home from our outback trip. I asked how they could get it so wrong? He informed me that they would have just been setting it the recommended factory settings, same as all Car Manufacturers would do.... He went on to inform me that it's just not that simple & there's a lot more to it than that....

Now, he's the last of the Old School trained "Front End Specialists" that I know of around our area and when he retires, all that knowledge & skill that he has will be lost... He even get's some of the "so-called" suspension professionals coming to him when they can't solve front end issues....

Question.... What have others found with their local tyre people when it comes to wheel alignments? I now know not to trust the likes of Bridgestone/Bobjane, etc when it comes to my car, but what about the likes of Pedders, Fulcrums, etc ??

A good wheel alignment could save u 100's of dollars in the life of your tyres & I will gladly pay $65 per year or 2 to get good life from my tyres.....especially when the tyres are $300+ per tyre

BTW.... What pressure do people run in their tyres?? I'm running around 40psi in the front & 36>40psi in the rear

plus..... does anyone know of a good wheel alignment place in Brisbane.......perferably on the nth side? Currently I go to Caboolture for my wheel alignments, but would be nice to know of other places when my mate retires from his business

I took my navara to have new tyres fitted at Ian Diffen here in Perth ( Myaree). Noticed it was pulling to the left so took back and they tried again and got even worse ! Then took it to old mate down the road from Ian Diffen , he's been there for 30 years . He charged 80 bucks and got it sorted and said it was way out!

I'm not sure if they set it wrong purposely so you have to buy new tyres sooner thus boosting their tyre sales or if they do it cause they're just too f&$king useless to do it right!!!

 

[terra88]

Pmsl as I just had a similar problem with a tyre shop that I thought I would go to as they were convinent to work (Tyrewise Kawana).
After taking the car back 3 times for balance problems and after doing 6-7 wheel alignments as it was still pulling right I asked the so called mechanic there to give me the wheel alignment settings for me to check, he then proceded to tell me he couldn't give me the specs I wanted (castor) because no one knew how to use the old machine. As you would expect I hit the roof and demanded my money back.
Got my money back and took it into Pedders Maroochydore today (I worked there for a few years and know the boys well) and did the alignment myself and now it drives perfect.

I was in the tyre industry for over 15 years and have heard all the horror stories of basically people not knowing what they are doing and it still shits me today.

One thing to be aware of is that alot of these major stores just want the money and get the car in and out asap with little or no adjustment (Toe and go as we used to call it)
One thing to remember with the d22 navara is that it is fully adjustable in the front and there is no reason why it should pull left of wear tyres (unless by worn parts) so make sure that if you have an issue with it, tell the guys doing the wheel alingment to do a full adjustment. They charge to much for wheel alingments as it is , so get your moneys worth....

 

[terra88]

I went to five different shops with my old rodeo to get a wheel alignment to fix camber after i lifted it everyone had a go charged like a wounded bull and all of them said they couldnt change the angle and just added heaps of toe in to try and make the tyres wear at same level but means they wear a lot quicker. always chewed out the inside edge anyway. a week before i sold it meet a bloke who runs his own small tyre shop. one man show he said bring it in ill have a look. got it nearly perfect he said it had run out of adjustment due to being lifted so high but the tyres actually sat flat on the road before that it sat on the inner edge you could stick your fingers probly 2" under the outside of the tyre. goes to show but how useless the big name shops are

Yeah the rodeo's and other shim adjusted 4x4 are fun. They are harder to do and need the upper control arms to be shimed to adjust camber/caster, and do sometimes cost more because they is more labour involved but still any shop that does wheel alingments should have fully trained staff that knows how to do this

 

[JamesPM]

I have had my alignments done by the guys at the local Tire Power and it sat perfect for about a month but then all came undone pretty quickly.

So I ran it down to an old bloke round town who does nothing but wheel alignments and asked him to set it right for me. same thing happened after about a month it was way out again so i took it back to him and asked what was going on.

He told me that the front end on the Navaras are just hopeless at staying straight and the only other thing to try will be to get heavy duty tie rods and just hope they make a difference.