The other day Iwent to the local express lube place for an oil change and lube for my '94 Ranger. They had a sign that said "free alignment check". When I asked them about this they said they had a device which checks your alignment as you drive in. How does this work? Is it accurate? What surprised me most was that they told me the alignment was OK. I have been noticing slight uneven tread wear patterns on the front.
Engineman
It's basically useless. The thing is, most of the tire shops that put your machine on the rack and press some buttons on a machine also give you pretty much useless information.
You need an actual alignment technician who can go poking and prodding around to make sure that everything is correct before even thinking about doing the alignment. If you have bushings that are bad, tie rods that are bent, and frame issues, most of the tire shops will just do the alignment and never actually find the problems that led to the alignment issue, and the end result will be worse than if you hadn't done anything at all.
Could be an alignment issue, could be just a tire issue, or it could be a severe mechanical problem in front end too. You don't know until you get it up and start putting some force on things.
--scott
More than likely just a two-pad "side-slip" tester that checks the toe. If the wheels are toed-in, as you drive over it the pads will be pushed apart. If you're toed-out, the pads will be pulled together.
Sure, if you're only concerned about toe. However, you may have several worn or bent suspension parts, plus totally out of whack caster and camber, but with enough fiddling (or sheer luck), the combination of errors may "cancel each other out" enough to make the toe checker think everything's fine and dandy, ignoring the fact that the right wheel is tilted enough to scrape the hubcap on the ground, while the left is so far forward the tire is rubbing against the front bumper.
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