Check out a gas station mechanic.

Midas charges high prices almost like a dealer.

Ahh, a mechanic from the "set the toe and let it go" school.

If it's pulling, the caster is off.

 

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How can anyone afford regular car repairs?

 

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He's driving a 93 Honda. No car payments, no need for full coverage insurance, 35mpg+, uses $40 tires, etc.


Tell yourself your car payment is $50, and put it in the cookie jar every month. That's far less than an actual car payment. But that $600/year will pay for a heck of a lot of repairs.

Even better if you do some of the work yourself. Brake pads are $20, but the shop charges at least $80 in labor on top of that. For 5 minutes worth of work that takes one wrench.

 

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Yeah, the car's paid off, so the only thing I need on it for now are regular maintenance (aka oil changes), gas, and the occasional car repair (the mechanic said the ball joints were the originals, which I suppose is possible since I didn't drive it very much until I got my new job a few weeks ago, and it only has about 128k miles on it). I probably won't give it up until it literally starts falling apart on me and I have a hole underneath the driver seat where I can stop the car ala the Flintstones.

My insurance on it is also only $112 every 6 months through Geico (switched to them from Progressive because they kept jacking my rates up and when I inquired about it, they basically told me "because the drivers in your area suck at driving, we're raising everyone's rates), thanks I think largely to the age of the car, my relative safe driving, and probably most importantly (sadly), my fairly decent credit score (don't think credit score should affect your insurance rates even though my score is fairly decent).

My brother said I should just get a newer car, but this money I just spent on the repair is cheaper than paying $150-300 a month on a loan for a newer one, which will probably still break down and need repairs anyway. Not to mention the insurance rates going up because it's a newer car and therefore would cost more to fix/replace if it did get wrecked.

I love watching people talk about things they dont understand.
If its pulling, check you tire pressures. Caster is usually built into the geometry of the frame and struts and can't be changed.
Ball joints dont affect alignment anymore on modern cars.

 

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I got the ball joints done for about a hundred bucks on my little dodge 4 door. I'd say if you were paying 200 it'd be too much.


There's literally nothing to them.

 

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I assumed the obvious crap was checked, like tire pressure. A half-degree of cross-caster will make a car pull noticeably. Camber not usually, unless it's negative on one side and positive on the other. And of course toe never causes a pull.

And you can change the caster/camber on everything. There may not be an adjuster on the car, but you can buy one, or shim/sleeve something, or even drill out the strut mounting holes so you can move the top.

Our shop isn't very busy, so I've only done about 500 alignments in the year I've worked there, but the concept is simple.

 

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That almost reaches the level of Fist_de_puma irony.

 

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If you have to buy aftermatket parts or modify the existing bolts and or holes, then it is not adjustable.
anything can be broken/modified to do whatever you want with it.

Toe can cause a pull on roads with excessive road crown.
Also, a lot of the time, the pull can be imagined since the customer isn't used to a properly aligned vehicle and expects it to behave like it did before the repairs were made. In the 15 years I spent working on cars and doing alignments, that was the usual cause for post alignment complaints.

 

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