Alignment Repair Advice
 

I am on stock suspension. I whacked my rear passenger side body/rim against a concrete divider ~13k miles ago. I hit pretty squarely with the wall. I rotated the scuffed rim/tire to the front. I have not noticed any problems in 3 years (I avg 4k mi/yr), no pulling, shaking, noise, nothing. Now that the tires are getting pretty warn, during maintenance I noticed some scalloping on the inside edge of the tire that I have on the back passenger side, as well as what I think looks like some slight negative camber wear (fairly uniform slant from the outside to the more warn inside) that my other tires do not have. In my understanding, we have no rear camber adjustment, only toe adjustment.

I went to try to get an alignment still on these old tires to determine if there is any damage outside of the limits of correction. I figure If it has bad camber I can buy some SPC LCA's, install them myself then get new tires (plan on going 215/45 MPSS), but the shop said the alignment is based on the tire and If I get the alignment now I will have to get one again when I switch. If I wait till After I get the tires and they can't correct it, I will end up driving around on my new tires with the bad alignment till I can order and install the new parts. That is if I didn't do some other unknown damage to the hub or something. Either way It looks like I will be paying twice for the alignment. So my question is based on the looks of the tire what would be the best option?

https://i.imgur.com/iVFifQ0.jpg

Did I just read that correctly? Your alignment is based off the tires? That is absolutely false. Id find a different alignment shop...

that was my initial thought too, "I thought" I had seen other shops bolt the sensors right to the hub with the wheel off. But looking at videos now, I see they hook them to the rim with the tires sitting on blocks on the lift. So it's conceivable that any angled wear on the tire "could" change the sitting geometry, or at least it sounds logical to me. I think I am most concerned with if more experienced folks would say that the tire wear looks like the toe is out of cal, or If I have other problems. Everything I read about scalloping blames balance or suspension wear. But the tire that I put back there never hit anything, doesn't noticeably vibrate or shake, and the car only has 25k miles on it so I doubt the shock is bad. And thinking about it more, we don't even have camber adjustment on the front, without a camber bolt kit. So basically from factory, the only thing that can be adjusted is the toe on our cars? At that point the tire should have absolutely no effect on toe (I think)

Your alignment won't change when you put different tires on the car.

Get tires, get SPC rear lcas, get front camber bolts (just for fun), and go to a different shop.

I highly suggest taking it to a good shop that will be able to check and diagnose your rear suspension arms...the wear is probably not due to a bent linkage but I'd certainly double check and think about replacing the toe arm. Your right rear toe is most likely off by quite a bit as that can happen from the factory or just from looking at the arm wrong (I'm not a fan of the OEM piece). A hit with a curb would easily knock the toe off.

- Andrew

Just to confirm: Nope. At least, not enough to matter.

If you've got one brand new tire and the rest very worn, it probably has a measurable difference, but not significant (unless you're corner balancing and going for perfect...) As long as tire pressures are even and tire wear is generally even corner to corner, I doubt you could even measure the influence on alignment.

how OP's stock suspension can be corner-balanced? :/

Oh, I reckon if you have driven that many miles since you whacked the tire, that any suspension (alignment) situations can be corrected by a alignment procedure.

I would suggest you have the alignment done where and when you get the new tires put on. Why? Because they will be more apt to make sure the alignment is correct in order to protect their new tires.


humfrz

humfrz: are you shure on that? "their new tires", as in ask for alignment to be done at tire shop? heard that they often to half-assed job on that. I'd rather visit competent suspension shop.

sounds good, the only problem with that is that I would have to buy a warranty for the tires. I know I am cheap, but the place I went to is a local ford dealership so they aren't some sketchy shop.. well besides being a dealership, and they were the lowest price $887 without a warranty, including $90 alignment. I have other quotes up to $985. Most places I've been to before give me a printout of the numbers before and after alignment, so unless they fudge them, or leave the bolts loose, I think I should be safe. It's been an expensive few months, so I was just hoping to save on not buying LCAs if I didn't really need them, or at least not have to pay for an alignment multiple times. Either way from what everyone has said, and thinking about it more, it seems an alignment first is the way to go. Which I have to go do in 6 min.

You know you can buy tires from other places than a dealership that will be much cheaper

What tires are you looking at buying. I've seen plenty of dealer alignments that would not pass as a decent alignment....

That scalloping doesn't look like anything to worry about, and neither does the *very* minor "camber wear". You might get ONE alignment done at a competent shop either before or after new tires, as mentioned new tires don't affect alignment *at all*.
I think that there is only toe adjustability on these cars. I would go with the least (nearest to zero) positive toe-in at both ends.

Funny, but after dealership botched few things with non-stock alignment i asked, when i visited performance shop, they did everything right and charged half of what dealership charged for alignment.

I am looking at the Michelin Pilot Super Sports stock size 215/45-17, and I can't really beat the shop prices. TireRack has them with tax and shipping at $700. Amazon free shipping and no taxes is $660, TiresPlus is $660 before tax, and the place at ford is the same. Raffield TireMaster I have no clue, they didn't itemize the quote which totaled $100 higher than the other two. I'll probably go with Amazon due to no taxes. That's what is pushing TireRack so high.

We don't really have (that I know of) any performance oriented suspension shops local, but I don't doubt your experience, I haven't had much good experience with dealerships. I tried this one because it comes up with it's own name, but when I got there they were wearing the dealership outfits from beside them.

Either way, I had it done, and am not sure if I should feel relieved or not. The sheet I got back shows everything in tolerance. that wheel was -1.7 Camber and -0.24 Toe (max tolerance of -0.04 to +0.21) Now +0.1 Toe. But the left rear was +0.27 and the left front was -0.22. I'm starting to understand why Andrew from Racecomp Engineering is not a fan of the factory Toe Arm. So two other tires are out as bad or worse than the one I am worried about, but don't have the same tire wear. Can my driving style just be excessively hard on one tire?

Good alignment shops typically mount tires too, ymmv.

Costco will do MPSS for your car, mine were under $600 mounted and balanced with California taxes.

They stay pretty low profile, check the regional subforum for shop recommendations if you haven't already, I'd be surprised if there weren't a few good shops within a reasonable distance given that the South knows motorsports, (Road Atlanta, Sebring, can't throw a rock without hitting a NASCAR outfit, etc.)

Unless you're drifting every left hand turn and none of the right handers I doubt it, based on those numbers the car should have been pulling to one side quite noticeably, was it? It doesn't make sense based on the numbers posted (flip a sign or two and this theory makes sense) but what was likely happening is you were 'dragging' that tire along the pavement causing the odd wear, tire wanted to go one way, car dragged it along the ground in the other direction.

Hopefully the shop did a good job and got those toe links torqued correctly and everything is hunky-dory from here on out.

That's one of 'bad' points of stock alignment. Allowed ranges are too broad, and car will pass ok/green even while it may handle very different at extremes of 'still ok'. Especially if those extremes are not even. Especially regarding toe. Slight toe out may make car less stable, having to 'fight with babying throttle', especially in low grip. Slight toe-in may add stability, allowing at least in straight line to floor it with minding less. Uneven toe may make car steer to side on/off throttle. Excessive toe (both toe out & in) is #1 tire wear cause unlike camber.
Hence even if one is not planning to ever track, it's very worth it to get good alignment. Good performance shop should be able to tune alignment camber within +/- 0.05, and toe within +/-0.01 (at least if you have added camber tuning options (our cars stock have only toe adjustment) with eg. adding camberbolts and rear LCA (as there are sometimes limits how much one may adjust with no stock adjustment, only with slack in mounting bolts, and as toe-camber changes are linked)).
For example, this is my printout. Of course, you can ignore excessive overall negative camber, which is dialed to tailor car more for track, but see differences in right/left, for camber and toe. Now compare to 'allowed' +/- for stock:

Well, my experience has been that places that sell tires do a decent job of aligning the wheels on a vehicle used for average driving.

See, I believe in finding a local shop, where I can get to know the people and they get to know me. For example, I've been going to a local tire/auto shop here in Puyallup for about 25 years. I pretty much know what I want to buy and what I want done when I take a car in ....... and they know me well enough that they best do it right.

Now, that's not to say, that if had a car that I tracked, I might be tempted to take it into a specialty shop for suspension and wheel work.

:)


humfrz

humfrz: i live in very small country. There are not many shops around, thus my observations might be wrong/too pessimistic, and experience non objective. But so far it's been like:
Dealerships imho most commonly do well only with stock stuff / stock parts / stock maintenance procedures and often botch things when one wishes something outside those bounds. They often also charge too much.
Tire shops and alikes .. if alignment is something like freebie or extra thrown in/offered alongside their main business, they have less motivation/less devoted time to do it pedantically right. They often also sell (tires) in big numbers to high customer counts, and have incentive to deal with customers quicker and care less if small count of them is left dissatisfied or if most don't care. They can reel more customers via main business, selling tires, by eg. slight price drops, then with offered high quality alignment job.
Performance shops, where customers turn to with those specific wishes to get wanted performance/handling change, specialize more on that. They also are more motivated to quality job to turn smaller count of customers to regular ones and gain free personal-advertising of them to customers' friends/relatives/acquaintances. Also they can advise/suggest/reason more performance oriented configurations according to their expertise of improving performance of client vehicles and according to what client wishes to get.
Of course, there can be exceptions to any of these type of places offering to check/tune alignment. Hence probably best bet would be browsing local forums and find shops/places that do quality job according to experiences of others and try few of them from gathered list, and if one is happy with service and prices, just stick with that place/those techs.

That sounds like a great price, but the closest Costco is in Atlanta over 100 miles away, I just looked it up, didn't even know we had them in Ga. I've never actually seen one. While we don't exactly live in a small town, we don't have any tracks near us except a drag strip 30 mi away.

No drifting and no pulling. The car tracked straight as an arrow, I could take my hands off the wheel without issue.

Thank You, I hope this handles it .

I see what you are talking about. Your printout tolerance ranges are about half of what my printout/stock ranges are. I see your rear total toe is pretty much zero, the factory range seems geared toward a total positive setting, Is yours set like that for track reasons?

I wonder though, if the factory toe arms suck at holding in place, is that the fault of the eccentric bolts in general, or just the ones the factory used? Also assuming they do, why would the SPC LCAs with the eccentric bolts stay in place when the stock toe arm's don't?
I found the SPC adjustable toe arms over at speedfactory at a reasonable price assuming I had to replace mine if one was bent. I don't see any instructions, but if the video on the LCAs are any indication they will use the factory mounting hardware, which means the stock eccentric bolts that won't stay in place. Does that mean I would also need to buy the SPL eccentric lockout kit?

Have you checked with discount tire? They are running a sale on the currently. If you purchase using their discount tire card you get a total of $120 back in rebates. If you choose to not use their card you still get back $70 in rebates.

https://www.discounttiredirect.com/b...-sport/p/35430

I hadn't before because when I first went in my local one, I was told they didn't do alignments, only mount and balance, though that was years ago and I never went back. But thanks for the heads up on the price. I'll check them out.

Discount does not do alignments. That said I would never get an alignment done at any wheel/tire shop without having an in depth conversation with the person performing the alignment.

I think you are way to hung up on this needing to be done at one place.

It's not that I'm hung up about it, it's that I don't know of a lot of options. I've got 3 "reputable" places, that actually do alignments, 2 if ignore the one that told me that his 30 years of experience say he will have to realign it after I get new tires. These are not the kind of places you even get to talk to the mechanic. you drop your key off at the desk and the car vanishes, you see it when they are done. I have previously pissed off the guys at the dealership by walking around the back and watching through a roll-up. Hell if I could I would be in there helping them, or doing it myself.

If thats your only options for alignment I weep for you. I would check with local forums to see if there is any better options with a short drive. Guess I spoiled by having one of the best alignment guys in the state if not the county in my back yard.

Definitely check your local region on here and on nasioc.com.

- Andrew

thanks, but either I don't know how to search or I am in a dead zone :lol:.

https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=21

but my local Toyota/Scion dealership made the "Dealerships to AVOID in the SE" thread, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

Have you ever considered moving....lol I kid.

I think we are on the same page ...... :thumbsup:


humfrz

There is Forged Performance and Top Speed Motorsports. Not sure how far away they are from you and I haven't been in contact with them for a long time though. Good luck!

- Andrew

The stock tires peel like that when they are worn to the wear bars and then get overheated. Doing something like drifting around a traffic circle will produce that exact wear pattern on the inside edge of the outside tire. Any chance you did some right hand donuts in the last few weeks?

about 120 miles, and 140 miles respectively. I appreciate the help, I know there are probably plenty of good places in/around Atlanta. And maybe I am just lazy but Atl seems like a long drive for basic maintenance on stock suspension.

no donuts, but It did rain a few weeks ago, and I got a good 3 second slide out of a right hand 90° turn. But I will take the tire peel to heart. From the sound of all the advice I am getting, (which I appreciate) I shouldn't have anything to worry about.