So this is what I've been dealing with all month. The day after Christmas I narrowly avoided a car accident (not my fault thank you) in the rain only to hydroplane into a curb at 35 miles an hour. Since the prelude is my daily driver (my girl is driving the civic right now) and I work two jobs I had to ignore the damage and ruin a perfectly good pair of 50000 mile yokohamas until I could find the time to fix it.

Feast your eyes:

That's a closeup of the front subframe.

Trashed subframe, control arms, radius arms.

Now the car is close to straight again. My friend hooked me up with an alignment machine for a few minutes so the front toe is set right, the front right caster is still out a tad, camber in front is now out a quarter degree, and the rear toe will not come into spec. It's barely out, but I need to square it up before I ruin more tires.

In order to get the front caster and camber I'm going to have to spend a few hours tearing it apart again, only to guess where to set it to before reassembling.

After having rebuilt the suspension last year, I really am hating alignments now. If I can get some cash soon I would LOVE to pay someone to finish it. As it is however, the car drives like a dream compared to the past month.



That looks straight enough doesnt it?

That's it, I just had to vent.

that sucks. when i had to replace my upper contol arms when i finished and went to get it aligned i got the run-around for about 2-3 weeks. its a really long story but i took the car in and i had already straighted up everything here at home in my driveway and it drove decently straight to the alignment place i was going to i got it back and the steering wheel was turned about 40 degrees to the left so i turned around and the guy who did it claimed that i had a brake pull which i magically did not have before i took it in and i had not had brake problems for nearly a year. i try and work it and be kind about it with that other place and until i just gave up and took to another person and got it done and it was perfectly fine. immediately after that i drove back to the other shop and finally they gave me back the money for their screw up. so i know what you mean, but my problem is a bit different from yours. but i do hate needing alignments.

That's the reason I'd hate to have to take the car in for someone else to work on. But unless you know the guy doing the work then that's the gamble.

the only thing they did was the alignment. i had it pretty close at home in my driveway. i thought to myself i should have kept like that and not have taken it in but i was driving 200 miles the following week so i had wanted it to be professionally done. the alignment guy had no clue how to do it. they did not have the computer either so he was doing it the old way but i guess he is supposed to be really good. my opinion is i will never go within 1 mile of that place. i found out about 4 days later that a local tire shop in my town had gotten an alignment rack so i took it to him and he did ad excellent job. all of my cars have seen very little of garages because i try to do everything at home and most things i can. i do not trust garages for the reason of what happened with my alignment.

I guess Im very lucky to have a friend in the business to let me have some time on their computer alignment machine(he works at a dealership). I just dont know if I can get away with taking the machine for a whole day to finish the job. In order to adjust caster, for instance, I'll have to disconnect the lower control arm to remove the radius rod and pop in(or take out) some washers, reassemble and hope I guessed right or I'll have to do it again. Not to mention that some adjustments effect others and with my lack of speed it could easily turn into an all day affair.

I have alot of respect for the people who can do this right as their job every day.

if that dealership is closed on say a saturday or sunday do you think your friend could get you in there. i dont see a dealership giving up their alignment rack for a whole day or even few hours.

i respect the people that can do it every day as there job but if that person is going to guess as to what might be the problem after he messed up and just not admit that he screwed up on the alignment then that pisses me off. luckily im in pretty good with the guy who i got to do it correctly that owns a local tire shop in my town. so i cant complain too much.

i really want to open up my own tire store some day and do alignments too. but that is a a while away seeing how im just a freshmen in college. but at least i am majoring in business management so that should help out in opening a tire store but i first want a job in what i am going to school for which is motorsorts management.

That sounds cool. I plan on going back to school this fall hopefully, but I'm still not 100% on what I want to end up with. I'm probably going to snag a degree in electronics engineering, but I have many interests. I could probably go to school forever if it was free. There is too much I would want to learn. For me cars will never be more than a full time hobby. I was very close on getting a job in a shop at one time, but thats not something I want anymore.

yeah i know what you mean. i am majoring in Motorsports Management and i am also thinking about a minor in marketing. but the main reason why i want to try and open a tire store is because there are just some things that i have seen people get screwed on by other places and especially alignments and so i always have said if i had my own store that would not happen or at least i want to think.