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.RRoller123 wrote: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.)
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.