For those paying attention, after getting the clunk fixed (turned out to be a inner tie rod bushing), the more competent dealer left the steering wheel crooked. So I took it to Merchant's tire, etc store after checking with them that they would listen to my concerns about doing the alignment correctly (as described by Bill, Steve and others here). So I printed out the advice previously posted here, highlighted the important stuff and took the car over.They said they understood the issue and only a moron would do it wrong and they weren't morons. In any case they did the alignment and took a road test. The front end was indeed off, according to them and after they aligned it, the car drifted slightly so they brought it back in and switched front wheels and that solved the problem. Car is now properly aligned, steering wheel is straight and the car tracks straight.By the way they said that they fix a clunk once per month in their shop in these cars caused by bad bushing in the left inner tie rod. In their opinion it is being cooked by exhaust heat because a pipe is too close to it. I haven't heard that theory before. One of the guys owns an Intrepid. At 50k miles he replaced the steering rack. It now has 100k miles on it and nothing else has gone bad on it except for the weather stripping. I told him Bill's suggestion of cutting the weather stripping and buying one additional piece for splicing.

Art,I'm not sure I get it."the car drifted slightly so they brought it back in and switchedfront wheels and that solved the problem"Why would they have to switch wheels for the car to steer straight and not drift? Something still doesn't sound right.One idiot lowered the air pressure on one of my friend's front tires to get the car to go straight. I'm afraid to let anyone touch the alignment on any vehicle.

Had my 300M aligned

Mar 01, 2006 22 Replies

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NJ Vike 20 years ago

I would assume that left this way for a certain period of time would mean that the tires will take on a certain wear pattern that cannot be corrected?

New tires required?

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maxpower 20 years ago

Yes , here is a good site on what it does, its a good tire balance machine

formatting link

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NJ Vike 20 years ago

Thanks!

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