or two A046's

 

Tirerack has Potenza S-03's for the Evo for $115/tire !!!!!

 

Those are heavy and weak sidewall...

 

david I talk to few experts in alignment. They seem to believe it not possible to pick up this kind of HP , unless these cars were so bad that they are ripping up tire at alarming rate. otherwise they seem to think this is just a way to get more business. Although they do say a bad alignment will mess with your quarter mile times. $430 for alignment may just prove there case. Please don't take this as an attack on you. this the info I have been told.


-mike

 

If you actually read the post, it's $430 for an alignment, corner weighting and installation of coilovers. Sears auto can't do any of that, except the alignment part. My last alignment was $240 including corner weighting, and if you think that a proper suspension alignment makes little difference, you have never really 'driven' your car. A proper alignment makes all the difference in the world with respect to how the car behaves and how fast it goes through tires. Not convinced about the huge HP gain, but I wasn't there to see it either. I'm sure that was an anomaly though; the car must have been tracking sideways before the alignment.

Bottom line is you should really get your car aligned, if for nothing else than to let those Advans last a little longer.

 

No...none taken.

For the driving I do, $400 for an alignment is way too much. I would pay ~$150. I use the Evo mainly for daily driving and future autocross events.

I had an alignment done at a regular tire shop and they did change the toe/camber because of the from tires wearing bad on the insides of the tires. I just checked the tires during a rotation and the wear is nice and even.

If I was doing racing and every second on the track mattered, I might be wrong.

 

Alignment is $180.00 no more no less don't know where you got the 400+ from. Most car come in over 1" and or up to 1 degree out the way I do my measuerments. No one complains about tire wear after they have an alignment that works for what they are getting ready to do with their car...and I've aligned a lot of cars....

 

Here is what I said on page 1. Please stop accusing me of being a crook:

"I also did my car which was really messed up. It was way off from trying to align it in a hotel parking lot at midnight. Here is what is crazy. Before I did the alignment my car on the dyno only made 415 whp/415 fl bls. The alignment was really bad. After the alignment I dyno'd again a few days later, nothing else changed. 451/450! It didn't dawn on me what could have made such a change until I remembered the alignment.

I don't know if that huge increase was from doing the alignment or not but I do know I didn't really change anything else. I had tuned it a little on the street but nothing that would give that much power.

After thinking of it more and more I believe it could very well have been from getting everything pointing where it needed to be.

If you think about 3,000 pounds sitting on four fairly wide tires, all of which have to accelerate a set of knurled rollers and each tire is pointing in a different direction it has to cause a tremendous amount of drag."

I could care less if I do an alignment for anyone, it is dirty hard work that I have no desire to really do. PLEASE take your car to Goodyear, I just heard on the radio this morning that they do alignments for $39.95!!! Now that has to be some quality **** right there!! Think about it, average shop rate for a mechanic to just look at a car is about $65 per hour. This same shop is going to put your car on their $100,000 alighment rack, set it up, align it properly for only $39.95. This means the entire process should take them about a half hour. Fools.

I am half tempted to take the time to completely whack the alignment of my car out of shape, dyno the car and then put it back just to see if it made a difference at all. I have no idea but since it was the only real change to the car I am assuming it must have had an effect on it. If you don't like the opinion please refer to the above paragraph.

 

I am on the phone with Al Friedman right now. He is going through hell at Firestone right now trying to get an alignment. I was telling him how pissed I was about being accused on here about trying to make money doing alignments by posting some dyno differences I saw.

Anyway, he reminded me of something that happened a long time ago. I sold my 1G DSM to John Shepherd. The car had run a best of 11.05 at 127 mph after hundreds of passes, 700 actually. To say I was well practiced in the car would be an understatement. I was a pretty good driver back then. Anyway, John got the car from me, THE ONLY THING HE DID WAS AN ALIGNMENT and went back to the track, the car ran 10.72 at 131 mph. Hmmm, that's odd isn't it? I forgot about that story.

Thanks for the reminder Al.

 

[QUOTE=McDougal]Alignment Specialties in Aloha, Oregon. They do a good job.

QUOTE]

In the Seattle area Speedware Motorsports used to be pretty good, but I've heard some horror stories about them lately. Another place to try would be Fordahl Motorsports. Both shops do lots of autocross and roadracers in the area.

Robi just did my car last week and I can't believe how much better the car feels. I'm anxious to get the car on the autox track and see how much better it drives.

I had the KW V3 competition coilovers, big rear swaybar and the rear bumpsteer and trailing arm bushings done along with the corner weighing and alignment.

Mark

 

Sadly after about a hour of arguments at Firestoine to even get them to TRY and get my car on to the alignment machine (they did not want to align it for liability reasons) what ever that means . . . .

BTW - it drove right up on the alignment machine like a champ

Sadly, they then claimed that my alignment was so far off that their machine "COULD NOT GET A READING ON IT" and they had no clue which way to go to try to get it close enough to specs to use thier machine which is a brand new top of the line Hunter alignment machine

2 hours later . . . .

I am at MAVIS tire in Greeenwich CT and they are trying to refuse to give me any alignment specs that are not factory settings

Again for "liability reasons"

They have not even seen my car yet so that ought to be "interesting" when they try to drive it on the machine

They have the same Hunter machine so we will see if they know how to use it any better

At this point I am desperate for any alignment at all

Basicaslly, I am wasting my entire day to deal with people who know nothing about high performance cars and who prob dont even know how to do a proper job even to install a wheel on a car

 

Judging by the way you write, I would take anything you say with a grain of salt

To respond, David Buschur is prob one of the most honest individuals I have ever met, Buschur does not rip off anyone - if anything I have seen them do far too many things for free for far too many people over the years with little appreication

I don't know which "experts" you have "talk to" but the fact that you fail to identify them gives what you are claiming zero credability to me

 

wtf?

You need to work on your people skills dude. I don't think anybody found that funny or beneficial in any way.

From an mod at that...

 

What do you people expect when you take it to $30 alignment shops like firestone, sears, etc.

Take it to a decent shop that does sports car alignments. There is usually always a shop locally that does alignments for all the autocrossers, road racers, race teams, etc.

 

Al be careful there, you're not such a hot sp3eler/Writ3R yourself.