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Good afternoon everyone,
I have a 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera 3.3LV6 that your website and You Tube channel inspired me to work on.
I replaced the ball joints (twice), outer tie rod ends, and front strut assemblies. I took the car to then alignment shop, and they aligned it.
The alignment lasted for about 6 miles, and then started pulling really hard to the left. I took it back the next day, and they said that the car had shifted out and they had fixed it and it should be good. It lasted another 6 miles.
I replaced the ball joints twice because i put them on incorrectly the first time, and had to sort of jimmy them a bit to get them out of the knuckle, so I replaced them just in case I messed them up because they were cheap enough.
The alignment shop can’t figure out whats wrong with the car, so they have decided it was frame damage. The car has never been in a wreck and I can assure you that there is no frame damage. I asked them where it was and they sort of dropped it being frame damage, they just say something is wrong with it and they can’t figure it out.
The car sort of slides in and out of alignment when you make a turn. The steering wheel is straight when it is “in alignment”, and taking a turn from one street to another puts the wheel off about 45 degrees to the opposite direction. The car will pull in the direction that the wheel is then pointing to. If I’m driving and want to correct the alignment, I can jerk the steering really hard and back against the direction its off and I can feel the car slide sort of sideways for a second and then the alignment is more or less correct. Then it will hold until I have to turn somewhat sharply, and then we are out of alignment again until I do the steering wheel jerking maneuver again.
Its been at the alignment shop three times already, and they can’t seem to get it right. Its a fairly reputable shop so I don’t know if they are telling me the truth or not but I would guess that they are.
I’m afraid of putting new tires on the car until I know that it won’t eat them.
Does anyone know what the bleep is going on or what I trashed? Or what I can tell the alignment shop to do to fix it? Its my mother in law’s car and I don’t want her wheels to go flying off on her way to the grocery store. It would make things a bit awkward.
Thanks for any insights you have.
– Danny
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tires are easy to check… take the tire off and find a flat ground and level ground and roll the tire away from you… it should al least do 2 rev before falling down…. if the ground was perfect you would beable to like roll it 1 block and would stop vertical…. if yuo have any bumps on your tred this will show it… you will see it keep falling over in the oppsite direction over and over at the same spot… also check and feel if you see anything wrong with it…
jack the car up … grab the tire shake right/left, up/down and spin the tire and see and hear if anything sounds bad… with the car on the ground push the car down and see how it bounces… could tell you if you have bad shocks…
also check your sway bar links and bushingsother wise I dont know what… I dont think that aliment shop knows what they are doing… because thats something they should check themselfs…
almost sounds like to me that they are not tighten down the bolts…. personally I would check the aliment yourself and see what your values are and see which value is off
the aliment shop is on the unerneth making adjustments so they can see everything is alined… elven if your car has fame damge they can uselly visualy see it… they have like a 9′ bar that they use.. have them show you with that.. how the aliment is and they have levels too… have them show you with that numbers are….. have them give you the vaulue of each tire is… and the compare it to what they had last time… if they tighten everything down the vaule shoulds of changed… elese a bolt or nut is striped… what they are adjusting…. with they should be able to figer out wich one it is when they are doing it… sorry for my ratsorry to say I woould take it to a profenincal mechanic shop that can do alliments and have them check it.. most likely it will take them like 15 mins to diag what the problem is… tell them what happen to you that the other shop cant figure it out and that your aliment goes way off in like 6 miles… and have them show you what each part can cuase that… most likey it is a prity easy problem to diagnose what the problems is..
now the only one that can like prove that you dont have any bent fame and stuff that could cause aliment issues is a good body shop… they have books that will tell you the distance between the parts of the frame… like want is the distance one bolt 1 vs bolt2… because they have to have it to see if they can fix a car from an accent and they have the tolances between themI appreciate the replies. I changed the shocks out in he back too, and had them make sure that they tightened them up on the posts in the trunk since I don’t have an impact gun.
I like the idea that something could be loose, or the tires could be jacked. They have a lot of tread on them but they are older tires. This all started because I wanted to get her a set of tires for her car, but when I went out to go check out the car, it was acting like a moon rover because of the all original front end that was 24 years old. The car only has 130,000 miles on it.
I will take it to another alignment shop on Friday when I get paid again and see what they come up with, and I will let you guys know. The alignment shop did say they checked the tires the second time I brought it into them but I don’t know exactly how they checked them.
Thanks again.
[quote=”CrazedAssassin” post=171871]Id be checking your actual steering column to be honest.[/quote]
^^ What he said. Sounds like the entire rack is loose or a clamp for it is broken.
With the car parked, and the engine running (to supply power steering assist), turn your steering wheel lock-to-lock to see if you can reproduce the flop-over. Get out and have a look to see what position the wheels are in, in relation to the steering wheel. If possible, take some clear pictures to post here.
If you can’t reproduce the fault when stationary, try getting it to happen while driving in an empty parking lot or quiet residential street and stop the car before you try to wrestle things into alignment. Again, take pictures if you can.
When this happens, is there a “dead spot” in the steering wheel rotation, where it feels like steering input has no effect on road wheel direction?
Just going from your description, (and I’m not a steering/suspension expert), it sounds as if your steering system loses the ability to “self center” things after turning the wheels from the dead-ahead position. You’d think this would be something any half-decent alignment shop could diagnose.
Going down a different speculative path, I get the mental picture of the front wheels becoming highly cambered-over when turned, and you have to wrestle them upright again with the steering wheel. Does the front end of the car feel like it’s dropping when it happens, and does it feel like it’s rising when you straighten it out again? It’s a bizarre scenario, but that’s why I asked for pictures, just to see what the front wheels look like when the issue occurs.
“I changed the shocks out in he back too, and had them make sure that they tightened them up on the posts in the trunk since I don’t have an impact gun.”
Are you saying you drove to the shop with loose shock mounts? If the top mounting holes got elongated and enlarged during the drive because the fasteners were loose, it might be contributing to the situation when the shocks are squirming around during cornering. You don’t need impact tools for assembly. The impact feature is for coaxing stubborn fasteners during disassembly.
I’m not sure it would be the steering column, because it wasn’t doing this before. It just happened after I started being the mechanic hero, but I will eyeball it really well when I get off of work.
I drove the car to Portland earlier to play with it a bit and see how exactly its going on, it just seems to be a motion turn that gets it to shift. I can’t get the car to slip in and out of alignment just sitting at a car light. There doesn’t seem to be a dead spot in the steering, or a consistent one anyway, its just when a more than slight turn in motion is going down. When it shifts around I feel like the tires are still responding to the steering wheel but the whole car just sorta floats sideways at a 45 degree angle sorta in the direction you are turning and forward at the same time and locks into a bad position.
If they weren’t tightening up the struts on the knuckle enough or not using some sort of washer on the two bolts that need to be there, could it cause the strut to wonder around? Its the only thing I would think would be moving like that possibly? It feels smooth and there isn’t any noise when its wondering off of alignment. It takes about half a second, you can feel it.
Apparently my home made rubber band covered grip was strong enough to tighten the rear shocks, they said that they were just fine.
I’ll take pictures when I get home.
Trying to take a picture of it isn’t going to happen, unfortunately. My camera says “insufficient memory to preform this operation” when you try to take a picture with the cell phone by opening the camera application. I will let you guys know what a different shop is going to say about the whole thing on Monday at 10:00 am, I have a new appointment.
Other notes on this issue: I heard five slight clicks when turning left that went away almost immediately. It didn’t sound like the sound a CV axle makes when its crapping out, almost like someone tapping the edge of a dime on a metal work bench. It has not repeated.
It turns out that they never tightened the struts, ball joints, or tie rod ends.
Both times they aligned it. I paid the Portland Area front end guru to retighten everything properly and realign the car.
The scary thing was that the banjo bolts for the ball joints were just finger tight and the knuckle was popping in and out apparently.
I am now on the road to getting a refund from the first alignment dudes. Thanks for all the help everyone. The car drives like its brand new now.
I don´t even…..
How can ANYONE be that negligent ? I mean….I`m stumped and at a loss for words.
If a mechanic here in Denmark did something like that, he would be fired instantly. And rightfully so.
[quote=”danny_lancaster” post=172522]It turns out that they never tightened the struts, ball joints, or tie rod ends.
Both times they aligned it. I paid the Portland Area front end guru to retighten everything properly and realign the car.
The scary thing was that the banjo bolts for the ball joints were just finger tight and the knuckle was popping in and out apparently.
I am now on the road to getting a refund from the first alignment dudes. Thanks for all the help everyone. The car drives like its brand new now.[/quote]
thats what I was thinking is some ideit didnt tighten down the bolts… because they shouldnt go bad that quickly and shouldnt ever go off aliment unless there is movement in it…. aspesilly if you take it to them and have them check it several times I just dont know how the hell they could of missed that unless they didnt know what they where doing
even like I said earlyer “almost sounds like to me that they are not tighten down the bolts…. personally I would check the aliment yourself and see what your values are and see which value is off”
[quote=”danny_lancaster” post=171809]The alignment shop can’t figure out whats wrong with the car, so they have decided it was frame damage. The car has never been in a wreck and I can assure you that there is no frame damage. I asked them where it was and they sort of dropped it being frame damage, they just say something is wrong with it and they can’t figure it out.
[/quote]So what your saying is they couldnt figure out that 3 times in a row they didnt tighten down the parts for the aliment???
uselly if a custmore comes back several times they want a second tech to double check it to see what his thoughts are… and to check your work… but I guess this 2 techs couldnt figure it out….
Now if they had any brains the frame damage makes no sence… because if you had frame damage it would be off when they are doing the aliment and they would know after a few sec’s something was off…. what they should all ways do for an alement is to drive the car a few feet at least but around the block is fine… this is so the car tires will reset… because with an alinement your stressing the tires by forcing them in or out… thats why you drive it for a little bit and recheck it… if you have to reajust it agian you need to redrive the car aroundIts crazy. The alignment would last for about five or six miles when they did it, and then would wonder out of alignment after that.
The company said that it wasn’t their responsibility to make sure the parts were tight (I used the torque specs that the chilton book listed on all the parts, its not hard to tighten them.)
When I asked how the hell they did the alignment without loosening the struts to set the camber and tie rod ends to set the toe, he just hung up. Called them back.
No refund, but his boss will discount the cost of what I gave them (100.00) on set of Goodyear $425 tires for the car. I would rather buy North Korean tires instead of give them any more of my money.
I have always been hesitant to have someone work on my cars, these things happen too often. I appreciate everyone one here helping out so much with it. I’m so glad I got this car fixed. The plan was to give it to my mother in law as her daily driver, but the night after I got this car going, a drunk driver passed out behind the wheel and hit my wife’s parked car at my work, and totally whammed it really hard onto the sidewalk. They are determining if it will be totalled or not.
🙁
Don’t accept that shit, you deserve a full refund no questions asked. It is completely their responsibility to tighten the bolts, not only did they jeopardize your life but the lives of everyone in your vehicle.
That kind of negligence isn’t only dishonest it will get people killed.
A full refund is the least they could do because you have complete right to sue them for jeopardizing your life, waisting your money on jobs not performed correctly, and waisting your time.
Don’t let those bastards push you around, it’s shit like this that gives all mechanics and technicians a bad name, they don’t deserve to own that business.
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