Dealership F'ed up my alignment
 

Ok I just installed my S-tech's last Saturday and so I decided to take the car in to get an alignment done... i'll try to keep this short!!!
I showed up at the dealership at 3:30pm told them I needed an alignment cause I had lowered my car they said ok and took it back... 2 hours later the guy comes up to me and said, that because I had lowered the car it was giving them problems doing the alignment and that it shouldn't be to much longer. 30 min later he comes back and tell me that there not going to be able to get the left side even close and that I'm going to need a camber kit to fix the problem. I told them to get it as close as they could and to write down the numbers and give them to me... finally 1 hour later they have "finished" my car 3.5 hours total for an alignment!!!! I had my three year old with me so I didn't want to make a fuss so I paid and left.

Heres the numbers they gave me for my car:

Front: Left camber: -2.4 Right camber: -2.2
Left caster: 6.3 Right caster: 6.0
Left toe: .00 Right toe: .04
Rear: Left camber: -3.3 Right camber: -1.2
Left toe: .14 Right toe: .13

Keep in mind this is the best they said they could do.

So I get home and I do a walk around to visualy check the cambers and it looks like someone had butchered my car. There is visualy not one tire on the thing that looks like its at the same camber and you can clearly see the right side is the jacked up side not the left side like they told me, not to mention the steering wheel tilts to the left a little and it pulls to left when driving. (not a problem before I took it in) So I guess the whole point of all of this is what do I do now I'm out $90 and it looks and drives worse than it did before I took it in!!! I plan on calling the dealership first thing in the morning and raising hell with the manager but I want some advise from you all. Do you think i'll be able to get my money back so that I can take it somewhere else? What do you all think?

Going to the dealer was your first mistake :) Usually if you want a decent alignment you need to find a good independent alignment shop...that will listen to you when you tell them what you want.

There must be something wrong in the rear....the cam must be stuck...or the install of the springs screwed up...cause there is no reason for the drastic difference in camber in the rear. I do know the camber adjusters get corroded and seize in the front easily......

rear cambers are messed up a lot.. that's what i think

Plain and simple I don't think the tech knew what he was doing cause the camber wasn't that bad when I took it in!!! I redid the camber by eyeballing it today and have an appointment at Firestone to get it redone on Mon... the dealership refunded my money and asked me to give them the numbers after I get it done at firestone. I'll see how that goes, I told the guy at firestone what happened and he was pretty confident that he could get it all lined up.

you might ask around your area forum and find a local shop that does setups for autox.. they will know what you are doing...

beers :beer:

well at least the dealership was pretty good about refunding your money.

why didn't you get the camber kit?

First the dealer. Now Firestone?! Lol!

Find a shop that specializes in alignment. Specifically, performance alignment.

your in miami? correct?

beers :beer:

^
That's right.

What Camber Kit!!!

Firestone has been pretty good about doing good alignments and I have a few buddys who take there 240sx and rx-7's there. But if there's any suggestions from people in the north dallas area on a good alignment shop i'll take them.

I'm not looking for a custom alignment or anything. I don't do anything but driving to and from work, I would love to do some autoX or something but I don't have time to do it right now. So all I need is an alignment that will maximize the life of my tires.

Does anyone know the factory alignment settings and or a setup that would work real well. I have the S-techs intalled and my tires are 275/35-18 on the stock
18x8 rims so any advise on some good numbers for this setup would be helpful!

Success!!!
 

Alright I took it to firestone today and they had no problem getting it within spec. so I have no idea what kind of crack the dealership was on giving me the numbers that they did!!!