wheels off center after differential work
 

My car was at the mech. for replacement of worn differential mounts and also the replacement of one of the rear control arms at both rear ends.
after i picked up the car today i noticed that the wheels are not in the center of the wheel wells anymore. they're almost 3.5 inches towards the front of the car. which looks strange.
i called the shop and they said it's normal as the new control arms and bushings are pushing the wheels/diff towards the front of the car.
that doesnt sound right to me. after all if that was the case the wheels should've been off center like this even when the car was new.
can anyone provide some input.
thnx.

That doesn't sound right, was this an independant? I would give the dealer a call, and ensure that an alignment was done properly after the suspension work was done. Take it to a different shop for the alignment and they will be able to tell you if something is out of whack. I have had several alignments done to my car, but it was not until I took it to the dealer that it was ever done properly. The car shook and drove me nuts, very frustrating, I guess the independants I took it too didn't have the right tools or information to do the job right. Good luck!
Brian

You ever hear the story about the blind men and the elephant? Your inditement of independents looks from my end of the elephant like you were a poor judge of what independent specialist to take it to. Every good alignment is done by a qualified tech. The equipment is irrelevant.

I would say that chances are good that every dealership has someone that can align your car. If you get him you did good. If not, well the tooling won't help.

The last alignment machine I bought I attended a demo of a piece of equipment at the local Ford dealer. The "normal" guy was sick and the helper guy was doing alignments. The SA was parking the cars on the lift he was aligning them and the SA was parking the finished products. I sat there and watched a by the book POS alignment that wasn't driven first and wasn't driven last. The readings were brought from where ever they were red to the first place they turned green (red and green denote readings in and out of spec).

A real alignment tech drives the car, figures the needed corrections, measures the car, relates the needs to the actual values , changes the readings (adjusts) to suit both the cars actual needs and to meet its prescribed tolerances, and then drives the car to evaluate his decisions.

See, unlike the rest of the car, aligning a car is still an abstract science. Alignment is the last thing that can be "tuned" about the modern car. The machine can tell one what should happen and a real tech then works within the standards to achieve the result required..... or knows the reason why NOT!

The last place you should take your car to get it aligned is someplace that doesn't do alignments. I do alignments for about 15 shops and they bring me everything. I was sitting on hold waiting to inform a single car line specialty shop (Asian car) about his car I was aligning this week when I heard his caller on hold message discuss his shop. I couldn't believe it when one of his advertised services was alignments. I guess he feels pretty confident in his capabilities.