I've had my gripes with tire stores over the years. Getting a good line up was a crap shoot at best. Putting 5,000 miles on a pricy new set of tires and finding out the line up is no good by way of tire wear (cause of toe, you might not feel it when you drive, even if Lee says you can) is a bad thing.
So, I got this left over thing (highly recommend it) in the pictures for peanuts, cause every one wants the fancy $30,000 machine now. It checks caster, camber, toe and kingpin inclination in about a minute. But not bent wheels. That requires a wheel spin.
I stick it to the car (I use a power inverter) as soon as I round the corner out of site. The thing says lineup is bad, it don't lie.
When I return a few minutes later they say the thing ain't no good cause it ain't on a level rack, pull it back in on the level rack they say. So on the rack it goes. The fancy machine says line up is good. So I put my old thing on it. Old thing says it's bad. It's hard to argue with the old thing on the level rack, cause it don't lie.
They say they will calibrate their fancy machine and do it again, next week. The fancy calibrate guy uses a $10 six inch "highly subjective" plumbers bubble level to calibrate the "entire" $30,000 fancy machine, with "one" read, in "one ' location.
I say no, use my old thing what's on the car right now and what works right now so I can go down the road right now, or put my old tires back on the old car right now.
I get good miles out of my tires right now.
Cause the old thing don't lie. Cause it's self calibrating by design every time it's used.
Yes, it's dead on. Every time. But you do have to know how to use it. That's ok, I teach them.
You got to watch them tire store guys. They're not crooks. Sometimes they just need a little help doing the job they went to school and got certified for. Or did they?
