Today I got 4 new tyres and a wheel alignment, I reset the kms switch and when i picked it up the car had been driven 15 kilometers. Is this normal? like a road test?
saxman99,
Jan 5, 9:09pm
A short road test would be normal to check for correct alignment. 15 k sounds a bit far perhaps. It might be that the nearest straight bit of 100k road is 7 k away?
bill-robinson,
Jan 6, 12:44am
why check at 100k?
franc123,
Jan 6, 12:54am
Any decent aligner will drive it on a number of different roads to assess its behaviour on different levels of road camber, especially if there has been a pulling problem in the steering and castor adjustments have been needed.
differentthings,
Jan 6, 1:02am
You don't seem happy do you.
lookoutas,
Jan 6, 1:04am
When a guy did that to me with a Morris Oxford years ago, I discovered that by pushing the knob in and winding in the opposite direction it wound miles on, so by the time I did the 3 mile trip to the paint shop I had wound on 52 miles.
Went straight back and told the boss what I'd done, then we waited for the fun.
Probably can't do that with modern cars, unless it got jacked up?
pandai,
Jan 6, 1:11am
Your wheel alignment was pretty out of whack going by the data you posted in your other thread. Perhaps they wanted to be thorough. Just ask them about it.
joanie32,
Jan 6, 1:44am
Not outrageous, especially if they went up the road and weren't happy the first time.
saxman99,
Jan 6, 2:47am
Why not check it at 100k?
morrisjvan,
Jan 6, 2:48am
Ask the tyre co .
nzmax,
Jan 6, 2:58am
The place that my parents take their vehicles to for servicing, repairs or wheel alignments always take them for a run in the 100km area. Its about 4km to the edge of town from their workshop, then 2-3km at open road then back again. That adds up to around 14km total. It wouldn't be too difficult to clock up 15-20km on a test drive to make sure everything is ok. If it was 50km I would be asking questions.
mischieftam,
Jan 6, 3:45am
Tell that to the boss-time is money, most will take it for a run along a piece of road they can trust to give a fair indication of whether vehicle is tracking correctly. Don't need to be doing 100 kph or for a long drive. unless your looking for a specific problem under certain road conditions .
franc123,
Jan 6, 4:05am
Comebacks tend to cost money too, MORE money actually, not to mention poor customer satisfaction and reputation. Not all of us have been on a training course on how to adjust toe, to ignore problems that can't be corrected by toe adjustment, and are instructed to have four cars an hour on and off the aligner and charge the same or more than a proper suspension and alignment shop or garage who actually knows what they are doing and want to do a quality job. I think we both know what type of establishments I'm referring to.
mischieftam,
Jan 6, 4:26am
95 percent of your wheel alignment issues will be solved by asking the customer the right questions , checking the wear pattern on the tyres and checking for suspension and steering component wear.Then seeing if the alignment readings agree with your conclusions and if not why not. should you do a pre and post alignment road test? sure but usually don't need to go far to find a piece of road to give you a true indication of how it's tracking.
lookoutas,
Jan 6, 1:52pm
Funny about what you mention in the first paragraph. If any alignment guys did this correctly, they would never set the camber to the recommendations, which chop the insides off the front tyres. I can imagine that alignment posted would do just that.
socram,
Jan 6, 2:09pm
Interesting. With all the electronic gubbins, I'm amazed that they need to road test at all on a standard car! On a non-standard car or where someone wants a set up more suited to the track it is obviously may need checking.
The guy who restored the chassis on my car back in 1994 set it all up and apart from an occasional check, it hasn't been adjusted since.
He also set up a Honda Integra for Bathurst. They wheeled it out of the container in Oz, both driver's did a few practice laps and just parked it. Perfectly set up.
joanie32,
Jan 6, 7:58pm
If nothing else, you should drive on the road to make sure the steering wheel is centred.
lookoutas,
Mar 14, 7:36pm
That - and to see if it's pulling one way or the other. Our wheel alignment guy always likes to run us back in the vehicle so he can check what it's doing before he attacks it. Then he has a set route of about 1k to test drive it afterwards. All total, a car from us could clock up 5 to 6k from start to finish.
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