2002 Z06, just installed VBP poly bushings front and rear control arms. Also installed lowering pads and bolts. I took the car to a local shop to have aligned and they are wanting to remove rack and column to make wheel straight. The wheel was slightly off 10 degrees maybe. The rack or column wasn't touched so if anything is off it is because the control arm cam bolts weren't put back exactly right (which I would expect) or the difference in camber from the lowering kit is throwing it off. Would there be any reason to remove the rack and column to realign if it wasn't touched?

 

Ask them exactly how doing that will accomplish anything useful. I'm not sure what they are trying to do since there is no adjustment to move the rack or column to account for a small misalignment. That has to be adjusted at the tie rod ends.

 

They are saying that there is not enough threads left on the tie rod ends to adjust the wheel straight. They said they saw marks on the rack bolts so are saying it has been removed which it wasn't and wheel was straight before adding bushings and lowering bolts. I told them the rack bolts aren't slotted so you aren't going to adjust that side to side. Then they said they want to disconnect the steering column from the rack and move it a few splines to get the wheel straight. I looked at the steering shaft but don't see splines. I see a coupling that has two flat sides you could only rotate that 180 degrees.

 

Yup, it only has flats so "moving a few splines" won't work.

 

Ok went and got the car and they said that they did align it but coudn't get the steering wheel straight. I guess they wanted to try to do something to make me happy because when they first called they started in with the "o well this is an exotic car bs" And to do all this extra allignment work it was going to be $600. I just told them forget it I will come pick it up.

I think I figured out what the problem is. I recently replaced the passanger side tie rod with one from Eckler. The new one is 4-3/4" and the factory one was 4". The one from Eckler said it was longer so there is more threads for lowered cars. This really doesn't apply in my case. The tie rod on the passanger side needs to go in and there is not enough threads on the rod because the socket is too long. So I am going to cut the new one to make it the same length as the factory one.

I'm not sure why the shop didn't pick up on this. When I went to pick up the car they were talking about taking the rack apart and somehow realigned the rack and pinion. I looked in the service manuals but didn't see anything about this. Even if you could do this I don't know why you would even want to attempt this.

Just goes to show you why I do any work on my car myself unless I can't do it.

 

I hope the "clods" that were working on your car didn't do anything to mess up the steering wheel position sensor.....

 

Running an alignment shop myself I can explain why they didn't notice the difference in lengths. Unless you remove the outer tie rod from the inner you cannot see the length difference. Also there is rarely an option out there to get a longer inner tie rod for most cars.

So with that in mind I can see why they wanted to "center" the rack.