Hot Rods I took the 56 chrysler in for a front alignment this morning

Suuablow,O.K. I understand that. I will be getting a front end kit but too busy to explain it. I don't think so.Thanks Bruce.

 

tb33anda3rd.I understand its an old car and it will need parts but at least tell me what it needs.Bruce.

 

Lothiandon, there is. When I find out what need replacing and do it I will take it there. Its the place I found that odd ball size tire for my Farm All tractor. Bruce.

 

your right he should have. and it may need only a few parts. i was just suggesting the "total" rebuild so you won't have to think about it again and it is cheaper/easier/faster/better to do it all at once than a couple parts each year[?]
i wish you were closer i would get it done for you................or.............what's the weather like down there?...

 

olscrounger, being in the heart of the tourist area, this shop is used to sticking it to out of towners who break down here.Bruce.

 

If it's okay to drive, keep driving it and save for the parts. When I say parts, I mean everything. Get a repair manual for your car. There's probably one on the WWW. Call some friends and put that ole girl back together.

Here in Houston, my friends with older cars don't even bother looking for a shop because they all do newer cars and trucks. As far as an alignment (after you replace the parts) you can do that yourself in your driveway. There are several successful methods for the DIYer.

 

I think the it needs a complete rebuild is their polite way to say they do not know how to align it,there might be some parts on the loose side but the car is most likely much older then who was going to do the alignment. I had two shops that would align older cars but both have died so I have no clue on where to take the next alignment too.

 

When I did front end work in Waco in the 70's I got a lot of work off guys who came to the shop after going to a front end shop about six blocks away and being told they needed complete rebuilds or ball joints on cars with few miles on them. Usually they only needed a couple of parts or no parts replaced but there were a couple that were beyond worn out.
I'd think that with the 56 Chrysler they were more worried about having it tie up the stall in the shop while they waited for parts and decided to run you off rather than fight with it. You can bet they checked their local sources and didn't find the pieces readily available.
I'd get someone who knew front ends and what and how to check look at it with me and see what it needed and go from there.
Rock auto only shows tie rod adjustment sleeves for that car so pieced may be hard to find outside of Kanter or another specialty shop.

This is what Kanter shows for that car. https://www.kanter.com/productdetai...&CategoryID=39&ProductCode=181&Router=Gallery

They also show separate pieces outside of the whole kit.

 

What if they would let the mechanic talk to you but you got charged for it? Even 15 minutes is billable in a shop, and if they spent the effort to diagnose it and you plan to do the work yourself, I don't think that's unfair.

I do agree it ****s having to pay money for something and it remains unfixed. But if a tire balance is $10 each then you spent $27 to have a mechanic confirm that your car needs some front end rebuild parts before it can be aligned. It's a bummer but I don't see that as a ripoff at all.

Also, they didn't try to upsell you on anything, or tell you they wouldn't let you drive it away until you spent $700 on it or something. They did the balance, checked the front end, found it was too worn to align, and let you know.

 

https://www.kanter.com/productdetai...&CategoryID=39&ProductCode=181&Router=Gallery

 

yep

 

No, it isn't, because that is not what you paid for.

From a shop perspective:

The shop put your car on the rack, and attempted to align the front end, but could not.
They inspected the front end to figure out why, and discovered that you had some worn components, preventing them from doing so.
Then they removed, balanced, and remounted two tires.
For ALL OF THIS, they charged you JUST $43.

If you had come to my shop, you would have paid for a whole hour, to put it on the alignment rack, attempt alignment, and then inspect, and for the time that it took to balance the tires. Figure on 90-minutes, total charge.

At $145/hr., you would get your car back when you paid the $217.50(+tax/fees) bill.

You paid for 17-3/4 minutes of work at my rates, exclusive of tax and any fees.

As for the tech being too busy, I'd expect that, no, scratch that, require that. A tech that is not busy, is a tech soon fired, for poor time management skills.

If the tech is being paid by the hour, every minute that he spends talking and not working is lost revenue to the shop.

If the tech is paid by the job, every minute that he spends talking is money out of his pocket, and lost revenue to the shop.

As for repairing things, don't find it surprising that this is not done. Repair is open-ended, and is not always successful. I have yet to meet a customer who whats to shell out $1160 for me to spend the day fixing a $200 part.

Time is money. Whichever is cheaper and faster gets done. That is basic good business sense.

The only people that "care" about our old **** is us. Business are exactly that, and their purpose is to make money.

As for eating breakfast, two paid 15-minute rest periods, and one unpaid break of at-least 30-minutes is, and has been, the law-of-the-land for quite some time.

 

Seems to be two trains of thought here. One that makes sense.

 

Gimpy, I respect your knowledge of vehicles and the repair of same. But your at***ude about this and your outline of what you think Bruce should have been charged is precisely why I'm , in spite of the beautiful scenery, so glad I don't live on the West coast, especially around Frisco.

 

Bruce, this shop probably did not know where to start and where to end, or they couldn't be bothered to source parts and deal with whatever it needs.
How does this car drive, ride and handle, is the steering sloppy, is it rough over bumps and railway tracks, are the tires wearing unevenly . Does it feel lose and ****ty steering and just general handling.
The Chrysler corp was well engineered and ahead of it's time with suspensions and steering, so take this slowly and surely.
Here is a parts source, http://www.oldmoparts.com/parts-front-axle.aspx.
Just getting this beast up on a hoist or stands, and you can systematically go through all your front end components.
But as it has been mentioned, maybe an entire front end overhaul is due and practical.
So keep us informed, don't let this blow off shop discourage ou, and look for some "good ole boy" who knows how to work on these old heaps...good luck

 

When live in a land where you and your mechanic pay 650k for a 1200 sf town house 150 an hour is freaking cheap.

 

The only problem with this is that it's W*lM*art and at $4.50 they've got some kid that can work a grease gun and probably not much else. If he sees a grease fitting he gives it a shot and if it takes grease he's happy and done and on to the next fitting. If he can see it. If there's a loose ball joint or tie rod end, well at least there's fresh grease in it now taking up some of the slop. And if a part happens to fail a couple weeks later it's not his responsibility. You got the $4.50 lube job.

...consider yourself lucky!

 

Like Hnstray said, these are not ball joint front ends. All pivots and pins, and I imagine when some of the folks at the alignment shops see them they get all confused trying to figure out how it works at all, much less trying to adjust them.

 

Thing with steering components, bearings, tie rods, kingpins etc is they seem to wear slow, because they do. But, when they start to wear and get a little slop, it accelerates from there FAST. I've never done it, but the toe-in part of the alignment is supposed to be easy enough with a set of jackstands and some string. Usually about an 1/8th or 1/16th of inch. The tires are set static to point inward just a skosh, so as when going down the road at speed they splay out to almost straight or near enough.

I agree it's important to find a shop that is willing and able to work on the old stuff. If I can't do it, I just gulp and pay it, when these guys hang up their shingle, that's it. And they gotta keep the lights on and pay the bills and all the other ****ing myriad nonsense foisted on everyone these days. They never really know what they are going to find when they tear into something this old. Parts can be hard to source. They will spend more time working on the old stuff in some cases, and they aren't going to make up for it on volume.

 

Reminds me of midas muffler....thirty years ago, my wife went in for a muffler on a monte carlo, they cut out the rear coils to install the new ones, seems there was something wrong with the brakes......took them to court, never been back. Entertaining story though, just need more space to tell it, and no....they didn't fix the non broken brakes.

 

Lots of comments here so I might as well throw in mine. I am a journeyman mechanic by trade and have worked in different shops in different places. The last shop I worked in (I work in the oilfield now), was my best experience. It was in the small town that I grew up in, and I was well known in the area as an honest person and a good mechanic. The job was flat rate so yes....every minute I wasn't working, I was costing myself money and the business money. But my p.r. with everybody more than made up for that. People appreciated and respected what I told them (trust), and I appreciated being able to talk directly with customers when I could as I knew that they were getting the truth directly from me and not some load of ******** from a service manager that did harm to our business (had one that told a customer that his glow plugs on his diesel were causing a hesitation while highway driving, and then told another customer that their oxygen sensor wasn't burning fuel properly). Take your time and find a mechanic that will spend time talking to you and if you trust him......be sure to be a repeat customer.

 

I'm in no way trying to start an argument but I disagree with one statement, could be just how you have it written, the first step when doing an alignment should be checking for worn parts not attempting an alignment then inspecting, otherwise I agree!


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Gimpy, I expect you run a very professional shop. That being said if this car came into your shop I expect you would have done as you stated and charged what the going rates are as you described. You also would have done a detailed detailed estimate of the work that was needed to do the alignment. You mechanics should be chomping at the bit to get a commission check for a complete front end job. I would guess at the rates in your area with charges for cleaning the parts and waste disposal of all that grease the total would be in excess of $3000 to do the job.

The man wants to know what was wrong with the car. And why it could not be aligned.

 

Find a shop that does semi's and large trucks, buses, etc. They still know how to work on things without a computer.

 

I was front suspension certified in the late 70s. Even back then, we might have seen a 50s Mopar front end a few times a year, maybe. Its one thing to see or read in a book about a king pin and bushing front end, its quite another to see one in real life. Its very possible Bruce's 50s Mopar front suspension was the first one the alignment guy ever saw. He could probably see there was slop in some bushings, but he may not have had any idea what those parts with the slop were, or what the proper name for them may have been.
I had the experience of looking at the front suspension of a 2010 Dodge Charger for the first time in my life, yesterday. They are a completely different animal then anything I've seen before! When you turn the wheels right or left, everything in the front suspension articulates, except the upper control arm, and the only pieces that had grease fittings on them were the sway bar connectors, and that was because they were replaced with greaseable parts. The only adjustable parts on that front end was the tie rod ends, if the components are out of specs, other then toe, they need to look for bent or worn parts. There is probably more adjustment in the rear suspension then there is in the front suspension.
I think a $4.50 Walmart grease job probably consists of checking the fluid levels, a quick glance to see if there are any grease fittings, and maybe a vacuum of the front carpets, and a window wash. I wouldn't expect a Walmart grease job to actually result in grease being put into many grease zerks.
That 2010 Charger I looked at is an old car these days. The only reason they would be in for an alignment is because something is worn out, and the tires are wearing funky. The modern alignment guy doesn't have a clue how (or where) he is suppose to make adjustments on a 50s Mopar, his job is to locate worn parts, and set toe on new stuff, and he is expected to do one every 1/2 hour or less. Gene

 

It was always the plus or minus that screwed me up.

 

Bruce Hnstray is right your car does not have ball joints And it does not have rubber bushings.Place a floor jack under the lower control arm as close to the tire as you can and jack it up. This keeps the spring pressure off the parts and start shaking the wheel and looking for loose parts King pins. and upper and lower control are bushing Look for side to side movement in tie rod ends and up and down movement in the idler arm. Lower inner control arm bushings can not be checked at this time jack the car up under the front cross member and let the wheel hang because of spring pressure more force is used to see if they are loose.

 

I agree with Gimpy in California, The numbers are smaller here in Indy, but he's right. I'm semi-retired but still working part time on mostly vintage Chevys at a Chevy dealer. I wont make an estimate on any car over 30 years old. You cant do it accurately. You always end up finding something unexpected - cracked, missing parts , or a worn part that everyone says"never goes bad" and it's not available , poor old repairs, ---and your estimate is suddenly worthless! That shop would have been with in rights to have charged Bruce twice what they did. Most guys don't realize of how much more time and energy it takes finding and getting parts for their old cars -you cant just have the FLAPS deliver. A pro shop is not going to give that time away.

 

My last experience with a front end shop on old cars was to take a an old Nova to get aligned after a complete rebuild of the front end. There was no old parts in the car. Drove it 6 miles to the front shop ,gave them the specs and the shop manual on how to align the front end.
Got the car off the rack and drove it 3 blocks and turned around and went back to the shop.
The tech who did the work had not pulled another car on the rack yet so I parked in front of the rack and went and got the owner. You could not safely drive the car over 25 miles an hour with his alignment. After talking to the owner ,he offered me a job. I told him no, but offered to show his tech/kid how to do front ends on older cars. We put the car back on the rack and I spent about an hour with the young man who was fresh out of a college program.
He thanked me and the owner refunded my money for the alignment after I told him that I would spread the word that they could do the older cars.
I went home and ordered some alignment plates and a caster / camber gauge for stock cars and have been doing my own ever since. Built my own toe gauge. that was in 1988.
Look for an alignment shop . Not a tire store. Find some old guy who has been doing front ends all his life, not some kid who has been to a one day seminar given when the shop he works at bought the new machine.
If you are capable of checking your front end you can at least know if you have worn parts before you take your car in to be at the mercy of some body who is pressured to sell parts by the management.

 

I agree with rush 549. Go to a shop that works on big trucks as well as cars. They usually have the knowhow, and the experienced old timers to do the work. In my area, Hartford, Connecticut, I go to Super Spring Co. The owner and his 2 sons run a good business. I bring my as found, early Ford front axle ***emblies to them to get them dis-***embled. Twenty minutes and $ 30.00 later, I am out the door. I learned after spending 2 days trying to get 5 front axle ***emblies apart, and a some very sore hands, it is the only way to go.