Where do you guys go to get an alignment done in Tulsa? My alignment wasn't off when I had my wider wheels on, but it seems to be a little off with my new slightly narrower wheels (which makes sense.)

I figured I wouldn't get an alignment done as long as I still had to turn the wheel right into slow right curves on the highway, but it's getting where it pulls enough that I don't have to on some.. so I figure I may as well do it before I wear my new tires unevenly.

Firestone says they can't do it because it needs to be corner weighted, and suggested Acme Alignment.. but if they exist they damn well don't answer their phone anymore.

Where is a good place to get it done that will do a good job and won't break the bank? :help

OK, I looked through tirerack's reccomended performance suspension installers and gave this place a call:

EUROPEAN AUTO SPECIALIST
4121 S 72ND EAST AVE
TULSA, OK 74145-4608
(918) 627-2002

They said they will weight it and do a 4-wheel for $85, done right the first time. Has anyone heard of this place?

I had them recommended by Brookside Imports when I was looking for my car.
Cheaper than the dealer who wants $129. I need an alignment also and may have to give them a call too. Thanks for the info.

Talk to Roger at 31st and 129th at the Hibbdon/Hessilbien. Whatever it is he knows his stuff, ONLY Roger! I think an alignment is like $65 - $75.... He has taken good care of me with several lowered cars and trucks with sport suspensions. No need to be raped by a Euro only garage its just a simple alignment, BMW is no different than any other make or model.....

Talk to Roger at 31st and 129th at the Hibbdon/Hessilbien. Whatever it is he knows his stuff, ONLY Roger! I think an alignment is like $65 - $75.... He has taken good care of me with several lowered cars and trucks with sport suspensions. No need to be raped by a Euro only garage its just a simple alignment, BMW is no different than any other make or model.....

Do they put weights in the car when they do their alignment? If not I'm going to Euro..

Do they put weights in the car when they do their alignment? If not I'm going to Euro..Eric, Your talking about Corner Balancing the car before getting it aligned (http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php? t=351199&highlight=alignment+corner+balance). It would be good to get it done, if you haven't cause it shouldn't change unless you add/subtract/move weight or change your ride-height. Did you ever get this done? Where? If European Auto Specialist did it, how was the service?
Curt, does Roger/Hibdon/Hessilbein do this.

Eric, Your talking about Corner Balancing the car before getting it aligned (http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php? t=351199&highlight=alignment+corner+balance). It would be good to get it done, if you haven't cause it shouldn't change unless you add/subtract/move weight or change your ride-height. Did you ever get this done? Where? If European Auto Specialist did it, how was the service?
Curt, does Roger/Hibdon/Hessilbein do this.

I think I am going to wait on my alignment a bit to decide if it is going to be worth it. I'm not quite sure if it is off enough to waste the money. I don't think European goes through the whole corner balancing act, but they did say they weight the driver and passenger seats. Guess it's better than nothing.

Do you have coil overs?

If so you definetly need to get corner balanced.

If not your going to be going through tires even faster than normal.

Also places like firestone dont really do alignments. They do adjustments. As long as its close to spec then they are cool. Which really sucks.

I know with the 350z's the trick to them is have some one align according to the tires (wear pattern) not spec.

Thats what I will be doing.

M3s are notorious for eating tires. Because of the stock rear neg camber.

All so if your lowered you should look into some adjustable rear camber arms.

http://www.turnermotorsport.com/html/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=TSU9940001

Good luck,

Ohh and i don't trust any alignment shops/

Nope, totally stock suspension. I like my ride height the way it is for now: nothing gets destroyed driving over crappy oklahoma roads, and I don't shred the hell out of my bumper every time I park. After I removed my porkchops to install the JTD underpanel, I can actually fit just over most concrete parking barriers. I decided to leave them off after I noticed this in my parking garage at work.

If you don't trust a shop, just get printouts of everything. Then they can go to hell and die if they don't get it right. :)

They can type in what ever they want to on the readouts.

The people that were telling you you need to get corner balanced don't know what they are talking about. I don't even think you can do that on a stock suspension.

Firestone has done my M3.

They did a bad job but they did it.

No need to be raped by a Euro only garage its just a simple alignment, BMW is no different than any other make or model.....

I'll say it again....
and no, he doesn't add weight to anything when it is aligned. Adding weight to the passenger and dirvers seat would throw off your alignment settings, especially if you only drive around by yourself most of the time, IF it has any effect at all.
EAS wanted to charge me $85 to reset my airbag light. He went through some schmeel about needing to diagnose the problem and download new code to the computer to fix it and that it would take a couple hours. BS!:nono Its a freaking reset just like your oil or service reset and it takes less than 5 minutes if your blind and double amputee..... From my past experience with this place I call BS on the weight thing too......

The weight thing is NOT bs.. read around. And most of the time I ride around with my fiancee anyway. Why would your alignment be off by adding the normal amount of weight that will be in the car in order to flex the suspension to the same angles it will have when you are driving it?

We're talking two different things now.... 1. EAS $$ and 2. corner balancing before an alignment. 1. I have no experience with EAS, other than he did not want to spend any time just talking about a potential problem with my car, he rather I bring it in. He does not do corner balancing, so therefore no reason to weight the car or for him to recommend to. 2. You can only corner balance if the car has adjustable ride height c/o's.. it is important, but not absolutely necessary. Proper corner balancing should be done with the car weighted as it will normally be driven. Corner balancing no longer pertains to this thread, as Eric has stock suspension.

I just read through this thread, and I wanted to post some of my opinions and experience. I've aligned my E36 M3 probably about 50 times and have aligned about a dozen other E36's on a regular basis over the years. Some of the obvious things are that if you don't have coilovers, you obviously don't have to worry about individual corner-balancing. Even if you do have coilovers, you're not going to notice a ton of difference if you do this, as E36's are pretty balanced right out of the box. So unless you have the ride heights totally wacky (a visual check will suffice), a really thorough corner-balance is nice, but not really that important. Even if you are racing, it's really hard to notice the difference.

For alignments, with a stock suspension, the biggest problem I've seen in my experience is worn bushings or bent suspension pieces. If you don't have any of those issues, then the alignment is pretty simple. As for adding weight to the driver or passenger seat, it's really not that big of a deal IMHO. If you have it, fine; if you don't, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. They don't change that much, unless you and your passenger weigh 300+ lbs each and your springs are super-soft. E36's like zero front toe (IMHO) and will track and handle fine with that setting. Front camber is not adjustable, so that's easy. In the rear, the rear camber eccentric directly affects the rear toe. E36's like rear toe-in (another IMHO). How much depends on what you want to do with the car. If it's just a street car, and will never see an at-the-limit fast corner, an autox course, or a track, then you can probably go with something near the stock spec and minimum camber on the eccentric. If the car will see any spirited driving (autox, too-fast street driving), then you probably want to add in a little rear negative camber and possibly a little extra toe. As you increase negative camber via the rear eccentric bolt, the toe-in increases. If the car will see the track, I suggest adding even more toe-in and when you get to the track, crank the negative camber to max. For my race car, which I still drive to/from events, I have the rear toe-in set to max. For the street, I run the rear camber eccentric at minimum. When I get to the track, I crank the rear camber eccentric 180 degrees, and it gives me max camber, and also increases the rear toe-in, which helps keep the rear of the car behind you. On the street, with the rear camber eccentric set to minimum, I experience no abnormal wear. In the front, I do not notice any measureable difference in my toe when I change my camber plates from minimum (which on my plates is around -1.75 or 2), to the race setting (Hoosiers seem to like about -3.25 or so). Sorry for the long message, just wanted to point out that E36 alignments are actually pretty straightforward. I've never really noticed any appreciable alignment differences by using weights or having a person in the car (for corner-balancing, that is obviously not true - you have to corner balance the car with a driver, gas, etc). The problems I've seen aligning E36's are worn rear control arm bushings (the ones up inside the toe plate, in front of the rear tire), that will cause horrible rear tire wear. I still use my original LRCA's, they have 17,000 track/race miles on them, and another 73,000 street miles. Unless you hit them on a curb or have an accident, they will be fine. I do plan on upgrading mine this winter, but only because I'm going to replace all of my bushings anyway, and while I'm in there, I should probably do it. Since the E36 front camber isn't adjustable stock, you can do a pretty solid garage alignment with a tape measure and a second set of hands. Just pick a consistent point on each tire (center tread groove, etc) and measure in the front of the tire (as high up as you can) and then the rear of the tire. That will tell you if you have toe-in or out and by how much. Not exact, but works fine. You can get relative toe that way (toe-in/out for each individual axle). If you have the time and patience, you can also do a very good 4-wheel "thrust" alignment yourself, what they call a string alignment. They are always more accurace than any machine can provide, but they are a real pain to do and take a lot of time to do it right. Basically, you find the centerline of the car (by measuring) and by using jackstands (or something similar), some fishing line or string and a good tape measure, you draw a perfect box around the car from the centerline. Then you can measure the absolute toe of each wheel vs. the centerline. Beware, they are a pain to do and require many beers and much swearing when you bump the jackstands with the strings attached and have to remeasure......

Sorry for the long message, I'm trying to avoid starting a nasty project at work today, and this was a good way to kill some time....

Later,

Vern