Took to Firestone for alignment and road force balancing. Tech said no use doing alignment because bad ball joint. Refurbished all of front suspension and took back.
Below is the report.
Tech said when this far out of wack they can’t do on their equipment. His explanation didn’t make sense to me. He gave me the name of an alignment shop he thought could handle the work.

 

Indeed, his explanation doesn't make sense. They just don't want the work.

Richard

 

Hi,

Front camber can be adjusted if you have the off centre bolts fitted in the sub frame, but to be honest these don’t make a lot of difference. You probably have an issue with your top mounts on the shocks, a common problem.

Front caster is adjusted with shims in the long bolt holding the upper wishbone to the subframe. But it could also be that the bushes are worn here and there is a bit of play.

Front toe is adjusted in the usual way on the steering rack ball joints, so they should be able to correct that.

Rear camber is adjusted with shims in the driveshafts, but also affected by the weight of the fuel in the car, but could also be bushes.

Rear toe is adjusted on a standard off centre bolt, so they should be able to do that, although they can become seized.

 

@shiner Thanks for the explanation. I was most concerned with the “X” on passenger side toe in. I said “isn’t that just adjusting the steering tie rod.” Response was “can’t do with our equipment.”

 

Go to a real alignment shop. I learned years ago to stay away from Firestone....

 

I will. I went there because they were the only one who I could find with road force balancing.

 

Went to an indie alignment shop that fixed me up for $150. Fixing rear camber would have been 2-3 hours of mechanic time. Told me rears would wear a little quicker. I’ve got no name tires so didn’t do.

 

2deg of negative camber is high, but not terrible. My 350z was around there from new. It did eat the inside edges off the rear tires in 10k miles, but for the handling it gave, i dealt with it. My S4 is setup at -1.5 all around because it's lowered 30mm, and that's where the front landed so I put the rears to match.

I hate that the firestone guys blew you off, I worked there for 5 years at the store on south beach and did alignments on all manner of cool cars, in addition to the mundane stuff. They pay crap so most techs just don't care, but that's not fair to the customers at all. People do abuse the lifetime alignment plans though, which pay even less to the tech so they look for more reasons not to do them.

 

Taking my 191k mile XJR in there tomorrow. One tie rod boot ripped so will be replacing both sides. Owner is going to check suspension all around for free to see if I need anything else. Doing for free because I’ll be coming back for an alignment when work is done.

 

The Jaguar parts dept kept 6mm shims because that was the size that came close fixing most cars (X100 and X308) so that is what I put in the cars when they 'settled' over the years. The parts were over $40 EACH so the parts dept said they would stock one or two sizes ONLY. We chose 6mm.

If you look, you will most likely find 4mm as the factory default OEM.

We just installed 6mm and 99% fell into spec.