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Re: Alignment and Corner weighting

To: Charlie Davis <gt40d@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Alignment and Corner weighting
From: "John J. Stimson-III" <john@harlie.idsfa.net>
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:58:34 -0800
> --- Kirk Meline wrote:
> > Those are good choices but Custom Alignment in
> > Mountain View is clearly the best choice in the bay
> > area.  They have the best equipment and race their
> > own cars.  I would also like to say that I have
> > never had a bad experience with their service over 
> > the last eight years which I can't say about anyone
> > else.

I had a bad experience with them.  When I tried them in 2000, they would
not take "maximum" as a spec.  They wanted specific numbers.
Afterward, they would not discuss whether the specs that they achieved
were at the maximum settings.  Not only that, but I was expecting to
pay $120 based on what others had told me.  They didn't give me a
service quote when I came in, and when it came time to pay, they
charged me $170!  I asked about that, and they said that they had just
changed their rates because of how much time it took to do an
alignment precise enough to satisfy an autocrosser.

Several months later, when I took the car in to Jack to get it aligned
again, what he measured as the initial settings was completely
different than what Custom Alignment's printout said.  At first, I
thought that Jack's alignment rack was out of calibration (who wants
to doubt the results of a $170 alignment?)  Jack's equipment later
correlated pretty closely with the Jeff Jio's Firestone readings, so I
don't think it was Jack's equipment.

Given the image that Custom Alignment projects and the amount that
they charge, I would have expected better results, and a lot more
professionalism.

I go to Jack for my alignments.  He gets results and treats me with
respect.

Ask me about Cavallino body shop sometime...

-- 

john@idsfa.net                                              John Stimson
http://www.idsfa.net/~john/                              HMC Physics '94






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