Well, today's plan was to get an alignment done this morning and then take my car to a local shop to get it all corner balanced this afternoon.

Since I spent ALL day back and forth to the dealership I didn't even get a chance to make it to the other shop. Now, I'm going to have to take the car somewhere else for another alignment because this is what they did for me:



The steering wheel is STILL crooked. The tech that worked on my car doesn't know his head from his a-hole. I could have done a better job with some f-n string in my garage.

What a waste of a day.

 

This is exactly what I want to avoid. What is a good al around performance/daily driving alignment for our cars?

 

Damn Doug, I'm glad I've got a couple good places in Tucson. You'd think in a place as big as Phoenix it wouldn't be so hard to find a compitent mechanic, let alone dealership. I've heard nothing but bad things about Big Two, and I'm amazed they're still selling cars.

 

I'd say around -1.2 front, -1.0 rear would be good for the street. Keep in mind though that the front camber is only adjustable by -1 or -2 degrees. Therefore, if you have springs that lower your car the front cannot adjust.

 

Sadly, I had to explain the camber bolts to the dealership today because they claimed the fronts could not adjust at all. That explains why the left and right are so far off on the fronts. You would think a "Mitsubishi Certified Tech" would know that. But no, I had to adjust the passenger side bolt for them and return it for a correction.

The dealership would not provide me an updated copy of the corrected alignment sheet so I have no clue what it's set at now. My best guess is -2^ front-left -2.2^ front-right. But then add to to it that I have a crooked steering wheel still. 6 hours and $99 later I still need an alignment.

 

I have to get my alignment done soon, nothing like this better happen.

 

So are you saying with springs you cannot adjust enough to stop premature tire wear?

 

To get a good alignment you must go to an independent shop that does not argue when you say up front that you want a custom alignment to your specs. Never go to the dealer or a tire-shop chain to get it done.

 

It all depends on which springs you get. Something like Tein S-techs will probably give you more negative camber up front than say Hotchkis. Basically you have two settings on the front. On a stock EVO they are roughly -1^ or -2^ depending on the position of the bolt. Stock position should be -1^ and when you add springs it will go negative on this figure. This is the same bolt that I had to explain to the dealership today because they didn't check this.

Of course after I told them about the bolt they provided me with this sheet... Here's a diagram to show the difference between the two:



If you want to be able to adjust the front camber with springs I would think the Cusco or Tein camber plates would be a good option to go with.

 

Well, the last time I went to the dealership for an alignment a friend of mine did it for me. Of course he had enough sense to do the job right and I saw the camber specs after that alignment: -1.6^front L/R and -1^rear L/R. The excuses that came out of the tech and the service advisor's mouth today on why my alignment was so screwed up just baffled me. If they can't do the job right, don't even try...

Unfortunately this looks like a hard lesson learned for me, and Saturday I'll be going over to Network Alignment to get the job done right.

 

Honestly, I don't see what's wrong with your alignment? Your toe was crazy out of wack before. Camber being more on one side than the other is not that big of a deal. In addition, he took out alot of camber in the rear to help promote rotation.

If anything, I'd be worried WHY there is an extra degree of camber on the right front than the left front. Sounds like something is bent.

Did you want everything set to zero?

 

It's not hard to screw up alignment on Evos. I had mine done 3 times by 3 different vendors before I was satisfied. You know something is wrong when you are holding your wheel at the 1:00 position and still going left. Good luck getting yours fixed.

 

Well, let me go into it a little bit more. The only thing they really did was set the toe and screw up the rear camber. Look at the horrible camber settings.

Front Left -2, Front Right -3.3
Rear Left -1, Rear Right -.4

The reason for the large discrepancy between the left and right on the front is because the camber bolt was set to -1^ on the left, and -2^ on the right. (See my post above, post #9 for clarification on this). After I saw the specs they aligned my car to I had to explain TO THE TECH that the bolt on the front right was not turned in and that it needed to be done. They re-stated numerous times that they could not adjust it. So I went home, ADJUSTED IT MYSELF, and returned the car explaining what I had done and that they needed to correct the toe on the front again because I had changed it. It was then that they realized what I was trying to explain and provided me with the sheet I posted above (in post #9).

The dealership would not provide me the new spec sheet, and also my steering wheel is still crooked.

I also asked for the camber to be set to -1^ in the rear, (not on the left side only as seen in my original post). When I questioned the -.4^ on the right, the service advisor (not the tech) said that "it was set to -1^ but when the sheet was printed it must have moved" Bull ****. It moved because the tech turned it back to -.4 when tightening everything down. In my experience it takes a little finesse and patience to get the bolts tight while retaining the settings. They shouldn't be printing the sheet until after everything is tightened down. This here is dealership incompetence at it's finest.

 

Ok, that makes a little more sense, I also notice that you have camber plates on your new coilovers. So indeed, they jsut didn't take their time to do things right.

Not to hi-jack, but how is the ride comapared to the stock setup?

 

Yes, they wouldn't even touch the camber plates. I should have set them +1^ before going in, so that's my fault on that one. But they still would have managed to screw it up, I'm sure.

Well, IMO compared to stock, the MR coilovers are so much better. You can set the damper settings to break your back, or to rock a baby to sleep. I have mine set in the middle 16 clicks front, 14 clicks rear, (32-way adjustable) and everyone is happy - me, wife and kid. Now if only I could get a decent alignment...