Thanks again Nick, I am on eastern Long island, (North Fork). I am no kid, (73), and have lots of experience and know how. Once again this trip to a "Pro" is just aggravation! Al W.

 

This Thread is going to go on for awhile. The shop owner will not be back in town to address this problem till Thursday. After much thought I am going to offer him a Deal. Refund me $150 of $345, and I will go on my way. Both of us will be unhappy but this mess will be over. Honestly I feel I can do a much better job in my garage with string and a Level! (Rant over!). I really want to say, THANK YOU, to all of you for commenting and sharing your knowledge and experience. I believe this Tread should be made into a Sticky due to having so much information and experience in it. Al W.

 

Hold on there. They charged you $345 for that? That is beyond excessive, that's a straight up rip off.

 

What do they usually charge for a 4 wheel alignment and what did they claim to do to justify the extra charges?

 

 

Nick is supplying excellent advice. I'll add that I've been doing 4 wheel alignments since the early '80's, and was taught to ALWAYS align the rear wheels first. If the rear is out, it can effect the front alignment due to thrust angle settings, among others. If it takes 3 hours to get the rear into spec, so be it. But it NEEDS to be done before you can move to the front end.

 

That's what I did!!!!! 61 drives perfectly straight.....no longer wonders...aimlessly!!!!!!

Good luck,

Dcamick

 

As promised I am reporting the latest on this alignment situation. I just got off the phone with the shop owner and the dialogue went as most of us would expect. He was very defensive with a bit of accusatory justification to defend himself. (I'm not going into these details.) It was a back and fourth until I pointed out that I explicitly told him that the Caster needs to exceed 1.5 and even more is better. Adding that the car does not center steer to return of turns sealed the deal. He gave in at this point and said he will do the Front at "No Charge" seeing as I paid for this already. He wants nothing to do with the Rear Toe setting so I told him I will be responsible for this. Can anyone offer a reasonable way to check for Toe on the back? Camber is easy as I have a Digital Laser Level to adjust that. I have a Four Post Lift and appreciate any thoughts on the "String" method. Please comment as I need opinions and advice! Al W.

 

So what exactly did they do for $340? Is that regular rate for a front end alignment there?

 

Al:

I am far from an expert on this..........so hopefully a few of the more experienced guys will input. But if you know the rear toe in degrees (your print-out) you can convert this into inches. Then you can see how much to adjust the rear shim packs to get it correct. That is the way I was planning to approach it on my own car, being careful to keep my final rear toe "slightly in" versus "slightly out". SWCDuke and others on this forum over the years have given information regarding shim adjustments versus rear toe in inches. So it is just a matter of getting it converted from degrees. I can't give you the formula today, but it is something that should not be difficult to get/do with a little investigation.

If needed, I will pursue this for you, but GTOguy and Cautrell05 may have a quick way to do. It should just be a simple matter of tire diameter and some old high school Trig functions (remember those?? )

Larry

EDIT: Here is one calculator I found for the conversion. I have not checked/tested it for correctness, but if you check on the internet there are many sites that have this information. https://robrobinette.com/ConvertToeInchesToDegrees.htm

 

On the Hunter alignment machine, there is a button to click on that changes measurements from degrees into inches, or vice-versa. Simply tell the guy when he re-does the front alignment that you want a printout of the settings in inches, and another printout in degrees. He won't have to re-align the car for this after he's done---it's a simple press of a button, and printing out another copy of the work done, but showing inches instead of degrees. When you have the inch amount that your rear toe is out of spec (it's actually toed in, if I recall) , you can use strings and a tape and get it very close to zero. But, as I said earlier, rear wheel toe/camber will affect how the car drives, and the car will probably have to be re-aligned up front to still drive straight with a centered steering wheel. For this reason, I always set the rear wheels first. Kind of like setting the points dwell before the ignition timing: the one affects the other, so it has to be done in the proper sequence. What I would personally do is set the rear toe myself, with strings and a tape, and THEN take the car back in for a front wheel alignment with an inch reading on all 4 wheels. Then you will know if you got it right, and the front alignment won't have to be re-done later, if you DID indeed get the rear right.

 

 

What did they do for $345? Violated the Trust I put in them as being a Top Notch Professional Shop. FYI, I agreed to a Flat Rate of $125 with my thought being that it's a two hour job. Here in New York nothing is a reasonable price, and the shop is in the Hamptons. Five years ago another shop quoted me $200 so I was judging off that. So here I am once again relying on myself to get things right. Nothing new for me as I have always done things myself, just for this reason. Thanks for taking an interest, Al W.

 

The front end is standard a-arm shims and gm tie rods. IMO, you got ripped off. I wouldn't go back

 

That would be a $54.95 standard front end alignment here. GM dealership

 

About 10 years ago I took my 66 Mustang to a Firestone shop to get an alignment...
The manager said he'd have to charge me an "exotic car fee" (yeah - no kidding!)

I said that the Mustang was the most prolific car ever sold in the US but he wouldn't relent...

I rewarded him with a nice patch of rubber on his driveway as I left...

I sincerely hope the OP gets it resolved; if not I'd contact the local Better Business Bureau....
Some laugh at this but I've had excellent results getting resolution with a crappy re-plating job and a bum transmission fix from Coffman transmissions -- I'm just sayin'

 

$340 divided by $125 an hour is about 2 hours and 40 min. seems a bit excessive for a front end alignment. Most of them I do are 30 - 40 min. Sometimes a little over an hour if its being difficult.

Nick

 

Yep, here too. The front end of a Sting Ray is just a basic SLA suspension that is as easy to line up as any other GM passenger car of the era. Nothing to it. It's the rear that's a PITA.
As for the first gen Mustangs, they were never exotic, but always were a real PITA to align, due to their cheesy suspension design. (Ford Falcon). I could align 3 GM cars to every Mustang in the same amount of time.

 

And if you made the Shelby mod with the 1" drop of the upper control arms for better handling requiring modified alignment specs - try explaining that to the alignment shop -- prepare for the sound of crickets...

 

You need to find the flattest piece of garage or driveway paving possible with a lengthy level and straightedge. Then you should be able to set rear camber with little problem. It's important after you make an adjustment in the camber bolt to roll the car forward and back a foot or two so that the tire adjusts to the new setting and then check it with your level or get an inexpensive camber gage like this one (not a great picture).


Once camber is good, center your steering and front wheels into the most dead straight ahead position that you can determine.

It's a good idea to purchase or borrow a simple tram gage to check toe in, in inch fractions.

With KO wheels it's easy to stretch string line from front to rear by wrapping it around the hub of the KO spinner. With hubcaps you probably want to pull them and wrap it around a lug nut so it's fairly taunt. That gives you a reference line. The track is different front and rear so the two lines are not completely parallel but it's a reference only so that doesn't matter. I find something to use as a long straightedge - 4 or 5 ft long should be good but it needs to be straight. First I check the straight ahead position of the front tires by laying it horizontally against the tire side wall near the center and check to make sure that the distance off the string line is the same on both sides and that the tires are straight. You can also check distance to the body on both sides or to the frame rail if possible. It won't be as accurate as an alignment rack but if careful you can get it real close.

With the tram gage, check toe in (toe out) for a starting reference point. If it's around 1/32 to 1/16 inch toe in you will be in luck. Then lay the straight edge horizontally against the sidewall of the rear car and measure the deviation to the string line at the same distance from the wheel center on both sides. For example, if the straight edge deviates further out from the string line on the driver side than on the passenger side, you will have some negative thrust to the left. If your total toe in was not in spec, then based on the measurements to the string line, decide which side it would be best to move a shim on to get it within toe in spec before going on.

With a string line, the apparent thrust angle in my example (front of left rear tire turns out and right front turns in) will be exaggerated because with the left rear tire turned out in front, it will move the string line out while the string line on the right will move in along with the front tire shoulder. This discrepancy in the string lines doesn't matter because it's an arbitrary reference line that helps you decide which direction to go in making adjustments. As reference lines they only become uniform side to side with the car's centerline after the alignment has been wiggled in and the tires are tracking on both sides the same.

Assuming your total toe in was within spec to begin with - for the example now it becomes a matter of taking shims form the outside of the left trailing arm and switching to the inside - and taking the same amount (thickness) of shims from the inside of the right trailing arm and switching to the outside - and re-check where you are at. Hopefully your trailing arm pivot bolts and shims have been touched sometime in the not too distant past and are free and easy to work with. This part is basically just wiggling it in until you have uniform deviation to the string line on both sides and total toe-in within spec. If the deviation to the string line is equal on both sides, then theoretically you have even toe in on both suspension sides. The car should be rolled back and forth and settings double checked.

Plan on the better part of an afternoon for all of this. Is this as good as a modern alignment rack - heck no. But if you are real careful and double check your work you can get pretty good results. I've got 3 old cars I've garage lined and two have independent rear suspensions and they all track straight down the road with hands off (provided I find a uniform section of road). And no strange tire wear.

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