After hearing from many people here and in my club, I finally threw down the cash at Firestone for the Lifetime Alignment. The impression I got from people is that you can take it there and get adjustments made when necessary. Quite difficult in my experience...

After getting poly bushings installed in the front a-arms, I took it down and had them align to factory specs. Bad deal, I forgot how horribly the car handled and how much push was in the front. Also wears badly on the outer edges of the tires.

Once I found the time, I went back to them a few weeks later(just a couple days ago) and told them about my experience with bad tire wear on the outer edges at the stock camber settings. They insisted that the car's at the "best" settings according to the books, which is -0.5 camber. When I originally took the car in, it was at -1.1, and I found NO excessive tire wear at these settings. I asked around on this board for good settings, and found that my -1.1 was a decent camber setting, some even said that they had -1.5 with good tire wear. After arguing with Firestone about this to no avail, they finally gave in and said they'd do it, but then they put a note in my account saying that, "set customer's custom settings, warranty invalid if related to excessive tire wear". Whatever.

I walked around and talked to the guy actually doing the work, and he was very friendly and even acknowledged them being hard-headed at the desk. He did his best getting everything set up to my liking.

What was wierd was that the best he could get this time around was -1.0 on the left, and -0.8 on the right side. But when I sat in the car while it was on the rack, everything was at -1.1 where I wanted it. Baffling, since I have lowered my car 1.75" and others have gotten up to -1.8 from what I've seen on the 'net.

Have any of you guys run into problems at Firestone like this also? Before I took it back to the ORIGINAL Firestone, I went to a different one closer to home and they pretty much didn't even want to mess with it. "Take it back to the Firestone you went to", was the answer I got from them.

- Brent

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~Project 12's DAMMIT!~

'94 Z28, M6, Borla Y-pipe, Flowmaster Cat-Back, Lingenfelter CAI, MSD-6AL, March Pulleys, Hotchkis STB, Spohn LCA brackets, Cutout, G-MAF, straight-pipe'd cat. (for the track only of course , MAC LCA's & Panhard Rod, Susp. Tech. springs, 287 RWHP / 321 FT. LBS.,

member, http://www.teamnwfbody.org

My page: http://camaroz28.cardomain.com/id/compstall

 

The Firestone tire center here will ONLY align cars to factory specs... so they didn't get much business from me.

I took mine to my local Chevy dealer of all places... they put it on the machine, let me check out the numbers and they tweaked it to pretty much exactly what I wanted, which was -1.2 camber, ~4.5 caster and zero toe. My car has the Eibach pro-kit, which is supposedly about an inch or so lowered, and they had no trouble at all getting -1.2/-1.2

 

It's always been difficult to get most shops to set the alignment to your specs. Normal practice seems to be to try for the factory preferred settings, which tend to be in the middle of the ranges. Consider yourself lucky that you've actually found a place that's willing to set outside the factory range, regardless of their making a notation in your account. Actually, you might have tried to negotiate a limit on that warranty exclusion such that excessive outside shoulder wear would still be covered.

It only took one less-than-satisfactory alignment shop experience (many years ago now) to convince me that I should learn how to do my own alignments. If you've got a reasonably flat driveway and a little patience, it isn't a particularly difficult job. After you've done it a few times it might not even take any longer overall, since travel time to and from the "shop" is zero and you wouldn't have to wait for the "alignment bay" to become available.

Norm

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'79 Malibu, way not stock (355, 5 speed, . . .)
'95 Mazda 626 V6 5 speed, not entirely stock either
'01 20th AE Maxima, 5 speed, stock (so far)

 

Try and find a performance suspension shop or someone who deals with performance, not plain vanilla passenger cars.

Check your local racing newsletters or just crack open the yellow pages and start calling around. It's really great to find one and stick with them.

Here in Hawaii, there's not a lot of performance shops period, but i found a good one on Queen St. called Pacific Automotive Performance Center. Ken is the owner and cool. He gives a computer printout to show the changes. He got my fronts -1.47, caster 3.90, Toe 0.08, rear camber -0.07, toe 0. Street driven daily.

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94 Z28 LT1 M6 black !CAGS,!TBB,K&N FIPK,PFC-4 pads,SLP:airfoil,STB,flywheel/pp/disk,1LE:RLCAs,panhard rod,front sway bar,Global West SFCs,Eibach Pro Kit,Koni SA,B&M Ripper,Prothane bushings,Jet-Hot Hooker shorties/y-pipe,CarSound hi-flow cat,Hooker cat-back,RE730 245/50/16, GS-CS 255/50/16(autox)www.MrBigXL.com

 

Thanks for all the help and info guys.

- Brent

 

I've heard if the camber is set too aggressively, it will wear out the bearings. Is this true?

I am going to be installing Sportlines and i want to go with -1.5, but am worried about the bearings now! I currently have the Pro-kit with -1 camber.

 

I don't think a -1.5 camber will wear out the bearings as fast as a stock camber setting will on the edges of the tires. Just my opinion.

- Brent