Landseer

84 Euro needed alignment so I again went to Sears. New staff.

Very satisfactory results. Chased caster for a while. Its just a fraction out on right side. Note: Hunter 400 seemed to display reversed-sign readings on caster, had him chasing it the wrong direction for a while.

Borrowed a page from SeanR's playbook.

Bought coffee for the boss, weasled my way into the alignment bay, spent an hour under the car talking to the alignment guy helping him figure out the features of the 928. Rack centering. Ride height. Don't lift to inspect, just adjust what I bring you. Basics. The Hunter sensors attached to the rims despite very little rim bead to hook. By rolling car back and forth the Hunter sensors are set. NO need to lift the front suspension.

Only bad thing: He used a prop to hold the brake pedal down for a while before I noticed. Looks like I have a little melting inside the inner stoplight difuser lenses. I can live with it.

Finally have a new team on-board to do local 928 alignments. Woohoo!

BTW, front was aligned fairly recently by another shop. Then driven about 3 K miles or so. Inside edges of fairly new tires are so far gone they won't pass inspection.

Rear was out-of-whack due to cross member removal to allow trans repairs.

robot808

so what'd they charge you for it?

Landseer

$69.99. Guy told me drive it a while, if it feels funny in any way, bring it back. Feels pretty good.

Told the guys we had 6 or seven more to bring in.

S4ordie

That's a good price if the alignment is right and holds.

Mrmerlin

before you go too far i would recheck all of the suspension bolts and torque them to spec its possible the rear crossmember to lower control arm bolts are not tight enough SB 140ft/lb it will take a big wrench ,
BTDT
but check everything

Landseer

Agreed.
We talked about it.
And it takes a metric crow's foot socket on a torque wrench to catch those rear adjusters.
Didn't see the torque values on the Hunter screens but knew about the 140's.

linderpat

Chris - get the steering rack lock tool from 928 Intl - it's basically a modified bolt and costs around $10 or $15 or so. When I had mine aligned last year, the shop used the same prop, and I had a real PIA steering wheel rubbing problem afterwards (see discussion here: https://rennlist.com/forums/928-foru...ing-wheel.html). After that, I'll never let a shop do an alignment without the special tool/bolt to lock the rack.

soontobered84

You also get a 6 month guarantee with that Sears alignment. I had the GTS aligned, 3 months later changed springs and shocks and had it aligned again under the same guarantee.

Landseer

I'm pretty sure the price is national.
Doesn't look like the Hunter 400 procedure involves lifting the car at all.
Which means you almost have a decent chance of alignment, cold, without talking to the tech.
In my opinion, if they don't want to involve me or at least listen closely, though, I don't want them to work on it. This crew seemed to appreciate the challenge. Gave me phone numbers so I can call ahead and schedule the same guy to do it on other cars.

Ed, I'll make one of those centering tools. We pulled the plastic cap, wiped out the grease and located the dimple. We kept an eye on it while adusting and it didn't shift even without the bolt.

Downsides are the torques weren't displayed, the Porsche specs are tight and require some fiddling. The ride height measuring points are not over the platform, so some sort of straight edge would need to be layed across from which to measure from.

And the staff situation at these stores runs the gambit. Just got lucky here. Plus, I picked Tuesday at 11am. Not setting the world on fire with business --- thats important. Saturday morning at 9 am would not be the proper time to ask them to learn something new.

The warranty is supposed to exclude if you leave and put on new parts and come back.

AO

I think you got a decent alignment (although I think they could have gotten the rear camber a little closer side-to-side) for the $70. But you are absolutly right that it all depends on the tech.

Persoanlly, I am glad I took the time to learn how to do this at home. It's not that hard, just a bit time consuming, but it's super accurate (as lonce as the car cooperates).

911tracker85

soontobered84

I am totally surprised anyone on this board would do something like that

jeff spahn

Andrew, I would love to learn how to do this at home. Can you fill me in or direct me to somewhere that can?

dr bob

Jeff--

search on DIY Alignment and get a lot of info that will get you started onyour way.

cpayne

Looks like you finally found an alignment shop.
I'll need those numbers to give them some more business. I hope it was the one at CTC on Rt 60. that less then 10 miles from me.

soontobered84

Well, I actually know that. The alignment was not done correctly the first time as they didn't center my steering rack. I didn't notice it initially but time and proximity kept me from getting it redone before I changed springs and shocks. I wasn't trying to get anything over on them, I just wanted to point out that I got absolutely no grief when I took it back for a realignment.