Crossmember shim vs lower arm shim.

[DieselSpider]

How do they do the laden? They don't have 2 employees standing around doing nothing, available to sit in the seats for the time it takes. Do they have weighted sand bags or something? (seriously, not kidding, I am curious about this.)

They are supposed to put a 150 lb sand bag in each front seat and a 130 lb bag in the trunk though some shops will put a strap on the front cross member/rear bumper and pull it down to the laden height. Some have the unladen specs while others after they align the car laden will take readings on the rack with the car unladen and use those for future maintenance so they don't have to have the car laden afterwards. The unladen specs may be posted somewhere around here too.

The front suspension will toe in without being laden so if they follow the specs in the owners manual when they align it unladen then the front wheels will be toed out and the caster will be off along with the camber when there is a driver in it causing the insides of the tires to wear out prematurely.

I just had a lifetime alignment done and the specs in their Hunter Alignment racks computer matched the laden specs in the owners manual so they put an extra spare in the trunk and had two of their employees sit in the car while they aligned it since they did not have the sand bags available. They were glad to do it for the experience on that type of suspension and the Photo Opp the Spider presented.

[azruss]

one of my books gives both laden and unladen specs

[RRoller123]

Excellent explanation! Thanks. I always wondered about that. I need to check with Sullivan Tire around here, they seem to be the right place to go. Or does Danny do alignments at F.I.A.T.?

[DieselSpider]

I went with the local Firestone who has a good reputation in the community. When the tires came in the had to do a quick recovery since the warehouse sent them a set of 10 year old tires which they can not sell in a Firestone store as they are limited by corporate policy to 5 years or less and then they go to the recycler to become mulch, etc. The had me upgraded to better tires that were under a year old for less money within the hour.

They offered that many classic car drivers will opt to have their oil changes done at the shop so they can check the alignment and touch it up at the same time if need be which is in keeping with the reccomendation on Mirafiori about checking the front end at every oil change.

[tomlebatisseur]

Many thanks...for your help....