Art,

I'm not sure I get it.

"the car drifted slightly so they brought it back in and switched
front wheels and that solved the problem"

Why would they have to switch wheels for the car to steer straight and not
drift? Something still doesn't sound right.

One idiot lowered the air pressure on one of my friend's front tires to get
the car to go straight. I'm afraid to let anyone touch the alignment on any
vehicle.



"Art" > wrote in message
ink.net...
> For those paying attention, after getting the clunk fixed (turned out to
> be a inner tie rod bushing), the more competent dealer left the steering
> wheel crooked. So I took it to Merchant's tire, etc store after checking
> with them that they would listen to my concerns about doing the alignment
> correctly (as described by Bill, Steve and others here). So I printed out
> the advice previously posted here, highlighted the important stuff and
> took the car over.
>
> They said they understood the issue and only a moron would do it wrong and
> they weren't morons. In any case they did the alignment and took a road
> test. The front end was indeed off, according to them and after they
> aligned it, the car drifted slightly so they brought it back in and
> switched front wheels and that solved the problem. Car is now properly
> aligned, steering wheel is straight and the car tracks straight.
>
> By the way they said that they fix a clunk once per month in their shop in
> these cars caused by bad bushing in the left inner tie rod. In their
> opinion it is being cooked by exhaust heat because a pipe is too close to
> it. I haven't heard that theory before. One of the guys owns an
> Intrepid. At 50k miles he replaced the steering rack. It now has 100k
> miles on it and nothing else has gone bad on it except for the weather
> stripping. I told him Bill's suggestion of cutting the weather stripping
> and buying one additional piece for splicing.
>