How much is reasonable for a good front end alignment, & how often should you get your front end aligned?

Price: I paid $ 85 each for my most recent alignmnents on a FWD and a RWD car. The shop had one of those new precision laser machines. I don't know if all that technology is necessary, because it wasn't around in 1985, but i would guess part of the $85 includes helping the owner pay for that machine.
Mercedes are supposed to be hard to align. I dont know if that is urban legend or reality, because from what I've seen on the front end, there are only two sets of adjustments: the tire rods and the eccentic bolts on the lower control arms.

Frequency: If the tires are wearing fine, I dont go the alignment shop. That could go on for 5 years! However, if I buy new tires or if I hit something unsually hard or suspect a bent tie rod, I will take my car in.

Notes: As with all shop work, I never drop it off and pick it up unless I 100 percent trust the owner. I stay there and watch! I've heard stories of cars being sent for new timing belts by TV stations where the bolts on the timing covers were marked with white out and were never touched.

Do it yourself: I once had a book written in the 60's in my possession where they showed you the procedure to do an alignment with chalk lines and plywood discs mounted on the wheels.I dont remember the procedure in detail, but sometimes I (wistfully) wish I could do it myself. i hate sending anything to the Shop!

Since both camber and castor plus toe are adjustable there are three alignment paremeters I believe. The long rods to the firewall area have threads as well I believe. On the way home with an ebay car I stopped at the dealer in bangor, maine. He only wanted 185.00 plus tax. That was about four years ago. I had noticed the front end was out quite a little. Believe it or not I just kept wearing the front tires a little for the remaining distance home. Turned out it was just toe in. The lady in front of me had just paid them about five hundred dollars for changing a switch in her dash. Never even questioning the bill and it was only a switch. Nice building though. In an ideal world you should have it done with the pre-load bar on the front end for the best results. First I would phone around and if you find someone with it just check his rates and reputation. Do you need laser equipment? Of course not. Also perhaps a site member near you might give a recommendation. A lot of modern alignment machines will not run their alignment program on a 123 type unless they recieve an indication the alignment bar is installed. There are about six alignment machines in my small town. Only the older fmc machine will do the 123s without the bar.

I guess through vehicle registration MBUSA knows of my ownership and sends me promo's in the mail. Usually once a year there is a $90 coupon for a dealer alignment. Other than the thrust bar, you could probably rig something up at home...but for $90 is it worth it?

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I did not know the bar was required on the 123 chassis, I thought it was only needed on the 126.
Great, now both my cars will require a more expensive alignment.
John

Someone on this forum once posted an excellent DIY alignment procedure. Wish I remember where.

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'82 300SD - 361K mi - "Blue"

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

listen, look, .........and duck.

Vsteck, I had read where it was unfortunatly. Also seems it is so as too many shops said they could align the car but when I got there their machines rejected the 123s. This guy that has done all four of mine with the older fmc machine had a recent new sign out that said he had a new alignment machine I thought. I nearly had a heart attack. Until I noticed thats not what it stated. Usually reasonable as well at about 30 american. One could perhaps have his done at a shop like that and if the preload was known and constant could make up a spreader bar. The preload may be variable during the proceedure but I am not sure. Should be easy to find that information out. Of course the preload bar is variable if the machine has one as some other vehicles use the same thing. Next shop that can do 123s is 125 miles away and charges about 80-90 american.

Here it is:

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?t=134630&highlight=alignment

The 123 and 126 both need the spreader bar. Don't take it anywhere else but the dealer. Without the spreader bar the alignment shop would need specs for the toe in. It just so happens that Mercedes doesn't supply those specs so any shop without the bar would be just guessing.

Danny

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I've spent a total of $70 at two places so far, and it still pulls to the right. Not as bad, but I can't keep throwing money at indies to get it a little bit closer each time. This last guy has the machine that lines up the rears to the front with lasers, but it still isn't right. I am driving down the road with the wheel cocked to the left, just wearing down the tires. The nearest dealer is 1.5 hours away, but I will get there eventually.

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1982 300CD Petrol/Black Leather

Around here Firestone will align the car for you for the rest of your life for $80.

Around here, I wouldn't trust Firestone to do a front end alignment on my wheelbarrow.

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'82 300SD - 361K mi - "Blue"

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

listen, look, .........and duck.

The older but far from antique fmc alignment machines do have a programmed toe in setting for 123s. How good it is in relation to having it done with the front end preloaded is anyones guess. I still suspect if one made up a spreader bar with a pressure gauge and hydralic tensioner. Plus found the actual pressure needed from somewhere and duplicated it might help. All it really does is a substitute for the road load when moving forward I imagine. And yes that is important. I wonder if that program on the fmc machine has a fudge factor engineered in? Take a mercedes with perfect alignment say. Put it on a test jig and see what it reads static. Program the numbers into the fmc software For all machines sold. Almost any reasonably good alignment fellow with a machine like the fmc or simular would get the same results as on the static mercedes or close enough. Maybe thats why none of the local machines that will take the spreader bar as an optional item will not let their program run without it. The older fmc machine has no provision for a spreader bar. The only sane reason for the spreader bar might be to compensate for the rubber bushings state of hardness or softness perhaps that I can think of. My cars are not driven enough to get an ideal of how good the results are so far. Generally speaking they do seem okay though. First thing I do with an aquisition usually is to have the front alignment checked unless the previous owner tells me he had it done reciently and seems credible. None of my cars pull left or right although a couple of my steering boxes are not exactly seized either. Must be the low indicated total milage on those two that has worn the internal steering box gears. For me to try to understand the initial need for the spreader bar. About the only thing that would cause excessive forward load problems that I can think of are that on an axis drawn through the centreline of both balljoints is not ending in the centre of the tire like the majority of front end designs. Normally one would think because you have variable load that it would be a poor design. It might be a carry over from their earlier cars that did steer exceptionally well. Wish i knew more about front end geometry. The ford granada tried a copycat design at one stage I believe that was not a great success.

If they aren't using the spreader bar and the tool to lock the steering box, then the lifetime alignment warranty means nothing. Does the warranty cover uneven tire wear due to bad alignments?

Len

I've had pretty good success with Firestone alignments (in TX and RI). It's hard to imagine that, in general, Firestone couldn't be trusted to do something basic like an alignment. Plus the lifetime alignment special is a deal that's hard to pass up.

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I actually got the benz dealership to do it for 70 bucks. I was surprised, it was way lower than any other shop, and I got free coffee in the waiting room

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I guess I'm gonna take it to the BENZ shop. See this forum is the GREATEST