What’s necessary when it comes to tire alignment?
Help! I tookmy car in to get new tires, and the salesman said I needed to have an alignment done before I could get the tires. I agreed and then later got a phone call in which the shop said they couldn’t do the alignment unless I first had $700 of repairs made. I freaked out, told them to stop and picked up the car. Where do I go from here? How does all thiswork? The car only has 68,000 miles on it and seems to drive just fine. — Alicia T.
Good job sprinting out of that place! While it’s possible your car does need work performed, the shop should have explained things in a much different manner.
Proper wheel alignment is important to ensure long tire life. And worn suspension and steering parts can allow even the most perfectly aligned wheels to go askewwhile driving, causing excessive tire wear. It’s not a bad idea to have an alignment done when new tires are purchased, especially if unusual or premature tire wear is evident. It wouldn’t be uncommon that, during the 40,000 miles or so it took for those tires to wear down, the parts holding the wheels in place experienced some wear as well. Nasty potholes, for example, can cause slight bends.
Let’s say a worn ball joint, control arm bushing, or tie rod end allows just a dime’s thickness of change in parallelism of the front wheels and tires. This would allow both front tires to scrub sideways about a quarter-mile per 100 miles driven!
When performing an alignment, it’s prudent to first inspect suspension and steering parts for looseness or damage, making corrections. Otherwise, any subsequent alignment efforts will be fruitless.
Unfortunately, no two techs will view the inspection results equally. One might look at the vehicle as it were his own, while another might simply feel pressured to sell, sell, sell!
If confronted with the phrase, “We can’t align it,” I’d counter with, “Show me why!” It’s only right that a shop would show you the loose or worn parts and explain their methods before having you authorize repairs.
To measure their looseness, suspension and steering parts need to be in an unloaded state and flexed, compressed or twisted. Rubber bushings that exhibit thin, spider web-like cracks might be OK, but more severe cracking warrants concern.
Unless you drive on terrible roads, it’s unlikely that, at 68,000 miles, you’d have more than just a single component or two getting sloppy. If you had a high-mileage vehicle with multiple worn parts and an expensive repair estimate, you’d have to more carefully weigh the costs.
In my opinion, what sets a believable tech apart from one you don’t trust is options.
If you hear, “You must do this,” get another opinion. If options are explained — for example, the tech says, “This isn’t critical now but let’s keep an eye on it,”— you’ve found yourself a keeper.
One sure-fire way to cut through the smoke would be for you to say, “Sure, go ahead, if that’s what I need. And oh, by the way, will you please save all the old parts for me? My brother is a field investigator for the Bureau of Automotive Repair and he might want to see them.”