looks like too much rear toe. i dont know the details of what the rear control arm geometry is, but i bet the car wanders when you hit a bump with one rear tire.

also odd that your front camber doesnt match. i doubt there is any adjustment can be made anyways

 

I took my car in for its first complimentary inspection . . .

I could sense that bad things were coming after reading your first sentence.

 

Yup

 

looks like too much rear toe. i dont know the details of what the rear control arm geometry is, but i bet the car wanders when you hit a bump with one rear tire.

also odd that your front camber doesnt match. i doubt there is any adjustment can be made anyways

looks like too much rear toe. i dont know the details of what the rear control arm geometry is, but i bet the car wanders when you hit a bump with one rear tire.

also odd that your front camber doesnt match. i doubt there is any adjustment can be made anyways

The camber IS adjustable.

 

interesting. i should check my alignment. i havent been super impressed with the handling, especially over heaves in curves. despite the humungous tires trying to hold onto the road. in comparison our previous Ford Escape was a scalpel to this EQEV pool noodle.

i wouldnt be suprised if everything is wonky, and it looks like i can add up to -1.5 camber in front.

anyways, since i hate dealerships in general i'll do my own alignemnt. for anyones info, i use the toe-plate method. and a phone angle guage for camber, and keep the adjuster even side to side.

 

So their position is, all they have to do is make it green and they're good. I disagree and this is where things got tense.

The front cambers are widely different with the left being positive and the right negative. This means the tops of both wheels are leaning to the left. Both left and right wheels have their camber at the extreme end of their allowable range. This is the number one problem I have with the alignment.

Secondly, front right toe is quite close to the limit.

Thirdly, right rear toe is quite close to the limit.

Besides just being sloppy, it won't take much for this alignment to drift back out of tolerance. Perhaps that's the goal...next time I'm there they'll take more pictures and tell me I need ANOTHER $200 alignment. (BTW, according to my dashcam, it took 12 min for them to make that $200).

OK, so it's not pretty, but it's within spec, right? How does it drive?

It feels very "floaty" and disconnected from the road at speed. Not dangerous exactly, but very different than when I dropped it off.

It has a slight pull to the left that wasn't there before.

And this is my steering wheel at cruise speed:

 

As an engineering professional, a lot of what I do lives and dies by the numbers. I may tolerate a measurement that's barely within spec, but I'd never deliberately set it there. If I'm setting a measurement (and charging $200 for the privilege), you can bet I'm gonna set it in the middle of the allowable range.

So I show up with the complaint of the car being biased to the left and point out the camber being so screwed up in exactly that way, and we end up arguing about how it's considered acceptable, and how the left positive camber is canceled out by the left castor (yeah right).

I politely asserted that I wanted the front casters set symmetrical and in the middle of the range.

I wanted RF toe increased to the middle of the range, making it a better match for the LF and also improving total front toe.

And I wanted RR toe decreased to the middle of the range, making it a better match for the LR and improving rear total toe.

After much gnashing of teeth they did a very nice alignment that looks great on paper and handles perfectly.

It's more than just making them all green!

 

First of all, did you actually pay $200, or was this covered under warranty and you just mention that it's worth $200? If you're in for first inspection, you're probably around 7500 miles? If your alignment numbers are in the red, that should 100% be covered by warranty, so if you paid I would argue your money back or go to GM corporate. Also, disregarding the "morality" or "legality" of just getting your alignment in the green, that steering wheel angle at cruise is NOT acceptable, so I'm glad they ended up fixing it for you.

Now for the technical stuff. It looks like they aligned the car with the steering wheel off (even before seeing your wheel off-center). Front toes are difficult, because they rely on the wheel being perfect. If you had no complaints of the steering wheel off center when you came in, and the sum-toe is good (which it came in perfect from the original report), they should have not touched front toe at all, just adjust camber and then set toe back to what it came in at if it moved after the camber change.

From your first alignment, the things that point out to me that aren't good (despite all green) are a high cross-camber and toes too low. GM should have a cross-camber spec that this dealer isn't adhering to, I doubt 1.7deg is in spec. When toe values get close to zero, steering tends to get a bit wandering, a bit of toe in helps with stability, there's a good reason that sum-toe is 0.2deg and individual toes are 0.1deg. The rear end looks pretty good, but honestly rear toe is so easy to set compared to camber and caster, that they really should take pride of their work and try to hit nominal.

Overall, glad you got a really nice looking alignment in the end, but hopefully no money out of pocket!

 

You won because you are a person that understands these alignment numbers, were able to speak their language, and you know the how car behaves relative to the alignment numbers. I hate to say it but the majority of customers would just be screwed and unhappy, and the dealer would tell them everything is good and normal and do what it takes to make them go away, all the while keeping the $200.

Good work.

Another approach is to never take the car to a dealer for “complimentary inspections”, which translates to “bring the car in and let us see what we can sell you.”

 

@acedeuce802, yes, I had to actually pay $205 (and change) for the alignment. This is in Canadian dollars, BTW. The car is just shy of 13,000kms and I wanted the tires rotated and Vehicle Wide Programming done before a big trip in 3 weeks (4000km total). They said they have no control over how the car is driven (true) so alignment is outside of their warranty. I expressed some surprise that a car with low mileage would even need an alignment (assuming it came from the factory well-aligned), and they suggested potholes. I try not to hit too many potholes, and local roads are well maintained, but things could shift as the car breaks in and settles, and for what these tires are worth, I wanted the car properly aligned.

It handled well before the alignment and the wheel was always straight. Looking at the before numbers, there was already a lot of cross-camber, but it may have been countered by the large thrust angle and steer ahead numbers ? Definitely getting above my pay grade now.

Oh but what WASN'T above my pay grade was the story that "the positive camber on the left would be cancelled out by the castor, and he took that into account". Not having that.

If it were me, basic pride in workmanship at providing a paid service would always have me try and do symmetrical numbers in the center of the range. Even my wife (who is not technical in the slightest but endlessly patient at listening to me talk "nerdy" to her) says they need another box to make green for the cross-camber. I'm really happy with the final alignment sheet, and I just think that's how it should have been in the first place. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but it actually feels even quieter and smoother than before. Maybe there's even some more efficiency be had now.

I think if potholes are the problem, then putting a car barely in the green is practically guaranteeing that it will be out of alignment the next time they look at it.

Outside the alignment, Vehicle Wide Programming has broken the forward camera. They tried to reprogram it and tell me they are unable to do so, and have ordered a new camera. No ETA yet. It seems likely that my upcoming 4000km trip will be without cruise control of any kind, including and most heartbreakingly, Super Cruise.

Another approach is to never take the car to a dealer for “complimentary inspections”, which translates to “bring the car in and let us see what we can sell you.”

You're not wrong, that's their intent.

 

Took my car in to have the Front Camera replaced today after it failed following Vehicle Wide Programming. 3 visits in total, 3 days without a car, but so far it appears to be fully resolved.

 

DD, (May I call you DD, Mr. DarkDan72?), I am familiar with steering geometry terms, but beyond that I'm as helpful as roller skates in a telephone booth on the details. But I do have some experience with human nature. I saw trouble coming in the 2nd sentence of you post. I'm curious, when they took pictures of you car did they take pics specifically of the tire tread? Did they explain that they spotted uneven tread wear as the motive behind informing that an alignment was needed? Because anything short of that is cause to believe this dealer is playing an old game on its customers, one we usually think of being played by a 3rd party repair shop.

Something else. You can bet that all the hours spend programming, maybe breaking, and then fixing the broken stuff was billed to GM under warranty (I've seen my local dealer play that trick. When these bastardos are on GM's clock they get very very thorough with the diagnosis's and repairs). The dealer turned your service call into income from both the customer and GM.

Unless you were given pics of the uneven tread wear I personally would contest the charge on my CC and inform GM corporate what happened. GM doesn't like being taken any more than you do. ;>

 

Well, I can tell you that there ARE several laser/camera devices mounted low at each entrance. I also saw the initial wheel alignment report (this was the point where he pointed out I needed an alignment) over the advisors shoulder and the picture on the screen looked an awful lot like the "before" alignment report pictured above. The dashcam recorded them putting the car on the alignment rack (twice as it turned out) and carrying alignment targets towards the car. The first alignment was lazy in my opinion, and the car behaved in a way I thought consistent with the lazy numbers. In the days between the two alignments I also measured the tire tread of each tire myself in 3 places, and there IS some variation of a full mm. I think if the whole thing was faked, they did a good job of it. It's BRILLIANTLY opportunistic, but I'm not ready to call it an outright con.

I've left out another complete sub plot to this story. The dash cam records cabin audio. The advisor talks to himself, and he made a number of negative comments about the Ultium platform and me as well. Basically, he wanted me out of his hair once and for all, and the Ultium hardware delayed that by crapping out the camera. And mine isn't the first car to have a failure. He called these cars a disaster more than once during this diatribe to himself. If they could have sent me down the road at that point they surely would have.

BTW, the dashcam records the tech taking his laptop along on a test drive complete with a 5 minute stop in a random parking lot. Then the remainder of the test drive followed by a return to the service bay and more laptop work. This is ENTIRELY consistent with the service report, and my spider sense does not tingle at all on the subject of inflating the diagnostic charges. I think he was legitimately trying to fix it. It didn't come together that day and they had to order a camera and bring me back a 3rd time.

I do believe they made money during the process at each stage of the job. I went through an issue with "special warranty coverage " on the 6 speed transmission in my Torrent in 2015 that cost me $3000. There was a known issue that, if it failed, was to be repaired at no cost. Well, it failed, and they allegedly installed a laundry list of major parts that made no improvement or changes to performance whatsoever, eventually writing off my transmission. I had to buy a replacement since mine wasn't repairable. I was pretty mad, especially with the "special warranty" letter in hand. I believed, and continue to believe, that the dealership charged GM for all those parts and their installation, actually installed none of them, and then charged ME for a transmission.

I took it up the chain, and eventually got someone from GM Canada to call me back, thinking they'd be upset for being taken advantage of by one of their dealers, but I was wrong, and my $3000 transmission charge was upheld. I considered a lawsuit but eventually decided it wasn't worth the stress and effort.

That fiasco is actually why I drove to another city to buy my EEV in the first place. And a lifetime of being disappointed with professional services is a big part of why I'm reasonably proficient in many corners of automobile repair.

 

I'm fairly certain that GM sets the number of hours per procedure and doesn't pay per the actual hours required. It is why they go through a diagnostic process rather than jumping strait to replacing a part. It's the only way they can keep costs under control. I read somewhere that NY is looking to pass a law that would require the OEMs to pay for actual time and actual labor costs.

I remember reading Lee Iacocca's book years ago where he talked about taking the helm at Chrysler and they were losing thousands of dollars on every car they sold after warranty work.

 

I'm fairly certain that GM sets the number of hours per procedure and doesn't pay per the actual hours required. It is why they go through a diagnostic process rather than jumping strait to replacing a part. It's the only way they can keep costs under control. I read somewhere that NY is looking to pass a law that would require the OEMs to pay for actual time and actual labor costs.

That all makes sense, but dealers who can add additional jobs onto the core work will glean the extra set repair hrs. Example, I had my Bolt EUV in for a minor issue with the front wheel (I don't recall w/o digging for the invoice). Along the way the mechanic found a "squeak" in the brakes (I never heard it), rust on the brake rotors (not the way I drive, and the car was very young), and managed to rack up a handful of billable hours to GM disassembling, lubing, and reassembling both left and right front calipers/rotors. I almost generated a complaint, but then concluded that may be the only way the dealer was staying in business, and there's no other Chevy dealers in the area.

And with more than one issue over the life of three Bolts I owned, I got the "we can't replace the part unless we can recreate the issue" excuse, which goes to your point about GM controlling repair costs. In a way, I see both scenarios working against the customer at times.

And although here in California we have the three strikes lemon law, on at least two of my Bolts, having taken the now expired State EV rebates, a 0% loan, and a heavily discounted MSRP... I was loathe to sell the car back to GM, so simply had to live with the glitches.