Rick, no I did not check the 7s...they said they would, I am taking the car back today and will have them check it. I think I am going Cal Festival of Speed, would like to, wife says ok, I'll PM.

masraum, thanks for the feedback, I'll talk to them about that.

v/r
Wayne C.
83 SC

The camber should be close to the same side to side .I prefer something like neg.3/4 deg.. The caster should be up about 6 deg.pos . The toe in if measured in inches is excessive and should be closer to zero (1/16 " toe in) The stagger setup is often used to compensate for the normal crown of a road. More camber ,less caster side to side .I prefer to set up more equally for predictable handling on all roads and live with a slight drift down the crown of a crowned road. If you do indeed have 1/4" toe that can cause slight shaking on it,s own but the readings you posted may be in degrees. Talk to the alignment tech for an explanation.

Thought I would provide a follow-up to my small problem. After two weeks of driving the car I could not take the shaking any longer. I removed the front tires and took them to Discount Tires to have them check the balance...ended up they were WAY out of balance (even though the p-shop said they balanced them). Turns out when the p-shop balanced the tires they left the old weights on them and just added new weights as needed...a HUGE no-no. Got the tires, put them on...now the car drives smooth as butter...it's like I have new car.

Moral of my story...let tire guys work on tires...not general mechanics.

v/r
Wayne C.
83 SC

Glad to hear problem solved Wayne, I've had Discount do all my cars and trucks for the last 10 years with no problems.

Glad you got it solved - it definately is not normal or something that you should live with.

Although I remember in the 80s, BMWs had a problem with shimmy at certain speeds (usually right around 50 mphs). The dealers would try to say it was normal "road feel!"

When diagnosing, perform the most obvious first. You were on the right track regarding installing the old 6" Fuchs to see if the new wheels/tires were the problem.

Does the Pcar shop have their own dynamic balancing machine or did they sublet this out (usually the case)? Even with old weights in place, the "tech" guy on the balancer could have added enough opposing weight to balance the tire. If they sent it out to their balance shop, maybe they overlooked balancing this one tire. OTOH, you said balancing wasn't on the repair order. Not sure what to make of this.

I agree. The L/R front camber is not close enough. LF and RF camber should be the same. If that's the max. adjustment, they should have told you something was amiss. Maybe a bent strut (didn't mean to alarm you) or they forgot to adjust one side... the same side as the out-of-balance tire. If so, sounds like the shop is a little loosey-goosey with details.

Sherwood