bring it to a tire shop that does alignments and tell them you want a print out of the before and after measurements. Your car probably has a bent control arm from some jackoff hitting a curb, pothole, street drain.. etc.

also, pop the hood and verify that it doesnt have camber/caster plates

 

bring it to a tire shop that does alignments and tell them you want a print out of the before and after measurements. Your car probably has a bent control arm from some jackoff hitting a curb, pothole, street drain.. etc.

also, pop the hood and verify that it doesnt have camber/caster plates

 

Ok, I looked under the hood, it does have plates atop the strut towers. I just called an alignment shop and am gonna be on my way right now to have them check out the front end and if there is no damage I will have them do the alignment. Hopefully the lower control arm is not bent...it didn't look bent to the naked eye, but I will leave that assessment up to the alignment machine. Thanks.

 

(next day) Went to the alignment shop to pick up my car....They didn't do the alignment work on it but they did inspect it for damage and they measured the "Factory Dead On" reference locations. (never heard of this before, but anyways). They said the front end of the car...has been "pulled before" and the front control arm needs replacing because it is infact bent. So, today I am picking up a lower control arm from the wrecking yard and some new bushings.....The shop charged me 60 bucks to measure the "Factory Dead On" reference locations. Did I get ripped off or what? I have never heard of this before. The shop said the reference locations are measured on the unibody of the car and has nothing to do with alignment measurements. wtf! Did I pay $60 dollars for nothing or what? And what the hell does "Pulled Before" mean.

 

I don't know about those specific reference locations or the cost to measure and inspect them but what I am hearing is that the front of the car was smashed at some point and it was someone attempted to "straighten" it back up.

 

I've never heard of it per se, but it makes sense - there's gonna be certain distances and angles that should be intact in the frame and suspension regardless of any body damage (front fenders in particular).

If this car has already been bent and straightened, I would NOT recommend it as a candidate for a lot of modification - you never know when that slight tweak in the frame is going to make the difference between you staying in control or losing it. The frame is also going to be weaker since it has been deformed and realigned (metal fatigue).

Keep it if it you want a cheap runaround, flip it if your goal was to build a monster.

EDIT: And Chico FTW! I grew up around there, and go back periodically.

 

They probably charged you for time in the shop and the diagnosis, but thats still absurd that you had to pay 60 for basically no help. You might want to take it somewhere like a frame shop to make sure everything with the front end damage has been fixed. You don't need to be putting too much strain on it if the unibody is weak or bent at all.

 

There's points on every car where you can measure from to check for frame straightness. the old school way is to measure by hand and now they have a machine that can do it much more accurately. Any shop is going to have a shop charge, whether they actually measured or not is a different story, but if they actually did, or had a frame machine they put it on to check, $60 isn't bad.

 

i work at a repair shop in florida and we have an half hour check out fee which comes to like $48.10 after tax(unless its an electrical issue that is wiring related because that becomes very time consuming) but if we find a problem and you chose to do the repair we take the check out fee off the bill and only charge the customer for the repair. so a $60 checkout fee isnt that absurd when depending on the area of the country and the type of repair facility the labor rate could be from $75-150 per hour(more expensive is usually dealers)

 

I'm an electrician and we have a one hour minimum at 70 bucks. Even if we reset your GFI or breaker for you. Life sucks sometimes, but 60 bucks sounds fair. The guy I used in the past for welding had a one hour minimum at 50 bucks.

 

You are what's wrong with people. That shop pinpointed the problem for you for $60. I would have charged you double. Be grateful because that machine that told you exactly what part to change out is probably upwards of 50g. So think again before saying you got ripped off. If you don't know what pulling a frame is you shouldn't be changing your own control arm either. I'm almost betting you didnt even know what the control arm was until you looked the part up.

 

Your criticism is about 13 years too late bud.

 

He's not wrong tho