Formal Auto Repair Education

shiden_kai:

If I had my druthers I do alignments for a living.

I've received too many ****ty alignments in my life and I just want to give back proper alignments to consumers.

On 06/26/2013 06:24 PM, wrote:
> shiden_kai:
>
> If I had my druthers I do alignments for a living.
>
> I've received too many ****ty alignments in my life and I just want to give back proper alignments to consumers.
>

+1.

fortunately, bad alignments are rarer these days - some of the modern
digital alignment machines are pretty hard to screw up and don't rely on
skill to get good readings. look for a shop with a modern hunter rig
and you should be ok.


--
fact check required

wrote:
> shiden_kai:
>
> If I had my druthers I do alignments for a living.
>
> I've received too many ****ty alignments in my life and I just want to give back proper alignments to consumers.

interesting. Every vehicle that came in "wanting" an alignment where I
used to work, either needed ball joints, or had been wrecked, and
couldn't be set without buying a "camber kit" that no one had in stock,
and a new strut or two.

I wonder if our idiot service writer left the customers feeling like you
do, when it wasn't true here.

I told him to stop "selling" something that couldn't be done. That he
needed to EXPLAIN to the customer that we would CHECK the alignment, but
this isn't the 1950's where we could just adjust ten different things,
(and that they would probably need something repaired).

IME of course
GW

Geoff Welsh > wrote:
wrote:
>> shiden_kai:
>>
>> If I had my druthers I do alignments for a living.
>>
>> I've received too many ****ty alignments in my life and I just want to give back proper alignments to consumers.
>
>interesting. Every vehicle that came in "wanting" an alignment where I
>used to work, either needed ball joints, or had been wrecked, and
>couldn't be set without buying a "camber kit" that no one had in stock,
>and a new strut or two.

These are all frequent things. And frequently I see kids at tire stores
just putting the car with the bad ball joints on the machine and doing what
the machine told him to do, returning the car to the customer just as screwed
up as it was before.

When I see cars going for alignment work, it's mostly either because the
tire store has convinced the customer that they need unnecessary alignment
work with their new tires, or because something in the suspension has just
been repaired (like those ball joints or struts).

But I suspect it depends a lot on your market, too.

>I wonder if our idiot service writer left the customers feeling like you
>do, when it wasn't true here.
>
>I told him to stop "selling" something that couldn't be done. That he
>needed to EXPLAIN to the customer that we would CHECK the alignment, but
>this isn't the 1950's where we could just adjust ten different things,
>(and that they would probably need something repaired).

Checking the alignment is a thing you do after repairing the things that
need repaired. But that's another story, sadly.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."