Shake

Can anyone recommend a good alignment shop in or near San Diego, CA that is competent and can properly corner balance and align my 993?

Thank you.

Chuck W.

Well, if no one has a place in San Diego, and you ever find the need or desire for a 2 hour drive up north, Darin at WestEnd in Gardena is great. Appointments are two weeks out.

Kika

+1, fortunately for me, I am close to West End, but there are many folks that come from further than 2 hours away to go to Darin.

flatsixforme

I have been pleased with Black Forest. Other good shops that are good are Dieter's and Mirage. One note on Mirage, last time I went there Jae Lee didn't offer the service to be able to check k-toe and said if I wanted it set he could do it for $500 (he apparently uses a very precise and labor intensive process installing dummy shocks and measuing the toe through the suspension travel). I didn't see the logic in spending $800+ on an alignment when most of that was for something I didn't know was needed or not. Black Forest includes the k-toe as part of their alignment and I think is around $315.

mcipseric

a little north. Cape Auto in Laguna Niguel.

Cupcar

Jae Lee at Mirage International off Miramar Road does very nice work IMHO.
(858) 581-1101
http://www.mirageintl.com/templates/index.html

cgfen

As you've seen above, most locals use either Jae Lee @ Mirage or Black Forest.
I've used both and give thumbs up to both.

visit each of them and clearly describe your goals and expectations.

have fun.

Craig

chaoscreature

+2 For Black Forest.
They have a lot of knowledge and use the proper tool for KT (not that it's any better than Jae's method, but it is MUCH quicker). +++ When I knocked my alignment out the first weekend (messing around with Adam in the car) BF re-aligned it for free. One of the camber adjusters wasn't tight enough.
Either Jae or BF will take good care of your car and both have solid reputations!
I suspected that if I ever had to have mechanical work done on the car it would be at BF so I used them to start out my relationship there as well.

Cupcar

I think both BF and Jae are excellent from what I hear from friends.

I found Jae to really think about it and go into my driving style and the overall set up of the car and come out with an alignment that takes chassis, tires and driver into consideration as far as toe, camber, caster and kinematics. Everything will be carefully set up and even. Great for competition.

BF may do the same, I do not know. However, if one only wants an alignment "within the range of factory specifications", I suspect BF is set up to do that "right" as quickly and cheaply as possible.

chaoscreature

They will both work with you and give advice on how to set up your car.
If you are doing a full race-prep I think Jae will be more willing to really work with you, drive your car, tweak settings, repeat... but it won't be inexpensive to go that route. Of course Mark Kinninger would probably do the same...
Go to both shops as recommended by CgFen, tell them what you are doing, check out their equipment and make your decision based on your gut feeling. The two shops are relatively close to eachother.

Shake

Awesome, thanks so much guys, plenty of useful information here.