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| - I've bought Lifetime Alignments for my last few trucks, and I have wildly different experiences at each Firestone I go to. Some do outstanding work, some don't do any work and some do wretched things to your vehicle.
Went in for an alignment. I had a few specifics I went over with the service advisor with how to align the truck in a way so the tires wouldn't rub when turning (33's on a Toyota). Basically, just wanted the toe adjusted, made that very clear. I spent the night before underneath adjusting caster and camber to my spec, so all the tech would have to do would be a quick tweak of the tie rod to get the toe dialed in. Told them to ignore everything except for toe. Per the Firestone printout, toe was only out of spec .8° before the tech started (pretty good by eye!); camber and caster were out of spec, but where I needed them to be for the truck to work off road. Zero rubbing when I drove it to them that day, just the steering wheel was off center.
What I ended up with after it was aligned was a truck that was nearly undriveable. The tech totally undid all of my settings. Yes, all of his settings were in the green when he finished, but he ended up pushing the front wheels about half an inch back in the wheel well by doing so.
To their credit, they offered to realign it that day, but I figured it was best to move on.
As I backed out of the parking space, I turned the wheel maybe 20° to the left, and it rubbed so bad the tire nearly ripped out my plastic fender liner. The tech must have heard this when backing it off the rack (he didn't hear it when he pulled onto the rack!), and he certainly didn't road test it more than 22 ft. or so. I couldn't turn the wheel even close to full lock when driving as I could hear the tire jabbing into the frame rail and inner fender. It was borderline unsafe to drive, but all I could do was laugh to myself and say "I told em this would happen."
When I got home that night, I redid what I did the night before, and then I had to crank the tie rods about 25 times on each side to get the truck driveable. You'd think that might raise an eyebrow if you're a tech and your initial reading indicates it might take 2-4 turns to bring it into spec...
Yes, my truck is special needs. Yes, I'm sure techs don't flag much time for Lifetime Alignments and they don't want to deal with modified pain in the ass vehicles. Yes, 99% of people won't have this issue. But I threw them an easy pitch and made the tech's life easy as I could. I thought they would hit it out of the park. They didn't listen, and they whiffed it, big time.
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