I needed an alignment after installing my coilovers. So I called Meineke the other day. I chose them because there's one less than a mile downhill from my house. I drove there to get it done. "Jerry" gets the car on the moonbase type laser alignment machine, and tells me my car is too low to get the lasers to work. So I take it back home, raise it up to the Stasis-recommended specs (25.5 in the front, 25 and 10/16" in the back) and roll back down to Meineke. He tells me then that the lasers still don't work, and it'll be two hours labor to take the bumper off. I say **** you, and I ride my bike back down to bring it back home to take the bumper off and drive back down there. I should have probably known by then that this was a bad, stupid idea and I should go somewhere else. But I didn't. So they can finally make their atomic laser base alignment thing work, and they end up with -1.5 degrees camber on the right front, -1.2 on the left front. I'm skeptical, but the guy assures me that "it's well within our tolerances." Bullshit. If I let go of the wheel for a hundred feet, the car drifts ten feet to the right. The steering feels weird (obviously) and so I call him with my complaint and get treated to "Jerry of Meineke's Suspension Theory 101." He tells me that I'm wrong, that the toe is perfect, the caster angles are perfect. I tell him it's the camber that is making this happen to me. He tells me what camber is. I tell him I know what camber is. He says "Ok, bring her down and I'll see what I can do." He works on it for another couple hours, calls me up (I rode my bike home again) and says "there's nothing I can do with these aftermarket struts you put on here." He tells me I should give him the brand and part number of the struts so he can order some adjustable bushings for the front upper control arms, (WTF?) or he can move the entire "carriage" over to try and fix the problem, but it'll be two hours of labor. And he makes no guarantee that this will actually work.
So the point of this ridiculously long post is to ask:
1) Is this usually this hard? 2) Can I do the alignment myself? 3)Where have you guys had success with alignments in the past? 4) Is he completely full of **** with the bushing story?
He almost said "adjustable upper control arms" but switched to "adjustable upper control arm...ball joint....pivot mount...uh, bushings."
Jerry already has my 75 bucks and refused to give it back, saying that he's done two alignments now for the price of one and then repeating the phrase "aftermarket struts," as though that is the ultimate arbiter of all human dispute. I'm pissed off and determined not to pay Jerry any more money and to get them to fix this. My car is much worse than it was, but this argument makes no impact on Jerry. So that's my vent/plea for help.

 

As far as your questions go, I have no idea but this is about the longest post i've ever seen. I'm sure someone here will help you out. BTW Jeerry sounds like an *******.

 

Eeek, I hope I don't get into your boat! I hope to have my coilovers tomorrow, and have the alignment done on friday... let's hope I don't deal with another Jerry!

As for your questions... did you have sport suspension? How low did you drop it? Apparently the stock sport suspension has a good amount of adjustment, provided you dont go crazy with the lowering...

 

The thing is, I don't consider him to be an *******. I think he's just ignorant and condescending, which is not a desirable combination in a service-industry employee. Headshok, I was under the impression that all our fancy control arms made this kind of adjustment easy, like you say, not impossible, like Jerry says. So we'll see.

Edit: According to smart people on the zine, Jerry is pretty much absolutely right. There is such thing as an adjustable bushing, you cannot really change the camber on one side with the stock upper control arms, and the best way to even it out is to shift the entire suspension system to even the front camber out. I feel like a stupid *******. And I want a set of $550 adjustable upper control arms from AWE and I cannot afford them at all. At all.

 

So maybe Jerry isnt an a*shole but dont feel stupid bro, I prolly would have reacted the sme way.

 

Alignments on audi's are not typical. They should be done by a Euro shop that has the correct knowledge. You just don't stick an A4 up on the alignment machine and go at it like any other car - especially if you have aftermarket susp. I learned that a long time ago. Most simple shops won't even touch an audi for an alignment - Im surprised Meineke actually did.


Also, once you lower the car, the neg camber becomes ferocious. Depending on how low you go, you may never get it completely aligned. There is not a lot of room for camber adjustment on our cars.

 

Well, *****. I can't believe I didn't ever find this information before. Not that it would have stopped me from getting a suspension, but still.

And yeah, I'm considering buying those control arms with my maintenance-insurance money. They're cool, they'll save me a significant amount of tire life, (I didn't say "pay for themselves," for the record ) and then I can pretty much self-align whenever I feel the need to.

 

hehe Sorry to hear, you should have taking it soem where els
after you had to take off the Bumper....
I have heard of the adjustable Ball joints but there bot that safe
it would be better the run with the Adjustable Controll arms
by the way do you have Q on ur car ?

 

I still think Jerry fuc'ks goats!

 

Yeah.
And lidonnit, that's neither here nor there. But he did have that kind of goat-******* look in his eye.
You can just tell with some people.