So I took my car for an inspection today. Everything came back fine except I was told I need an allignment. I was told that it appeared like my car was never alligned properly from day 1, and it was suggested I go to the dealer and complain for free alignment and possibly replacement of the tires (since they are basicly shot at 12,000 miles) I have curbed my rims and I feel if they see that they are going to blame me for the car being out of allignment, even tho I know I havent hit anything hard enough to do anything what so ever. The tires are also being worn even from the inside, meanign I would have had to mess the allingment up perfectly on both sides I think. I also did not rotate untill like 8,000 miles, but I don;t think that matters either. I have a feelign they will use these meaningless things against me, I'll be calling for an appointment next week, hopefully somethign good happens.

 

I woudlnt worry about it too much, you can curb the rim from doing somthing as trivial as parallel parking, thats not going to throw your car out of alignment tho. You should get some kind of documentation from the inspection place saying that it looked like the car was never properly aligned, that will fly more than just your word. And if you do need to pay for an alignment its not horribly expensive.

 

yes depending on how hard you hit the curb, you can DEFINITELY knock out your alignment.

and secondly, waiting until 8,000 miles to rotate tires? Not to be harsh, but you think that's not the problem? Of course that's part of it! These are low-profile tires, they need to be rotated much more frequently than what you did. Toyo for instance requires their low profile tires to be rotated within 3500 miles, anything over that, forget them covering warranty.

And yes you're right, they will use the lack of rotation and the damages to the wheels as proof of why the tires are bald, and the alignment is out. It's not like you have any proof about how exactly the wheels got damaged.

I have seen brand new cars that had their alignments not done correctly at the factory, but with the damage to the wheels, you're not going to be able to get much sympathy at the dealer. Chances are they'll charge you like $80-90 for a four wheel alignment. And they won't replace your tires at all. Sorry but hey, i'm being honest.

Next tires you get, make sure to rotate them a lot sooner.. They'll last much longer!

 

my tC pulled to the right even so slighted right when i took it off the lot. However, after i dropped it, it went straight! :D

 

I;ll haveto get that note before I go down to the dealer, thx for the idea.

I almost want to get lowering springs since i have to allign either way..just don;t know if I should be any lower with where I live and the winters.

 

yeah sciontC-
this is exactly why I think toyota is going to lose customers. Their dealers, not all, but most of them, just lie to customers and think the customers will come back because they are "Toyota".. yeah whatever, car quality isn't the whole thing, it's SERVICE after the sale. And how you're treated then.

I tell ya, if you don't get satisfaction at this dealership, go to another. I wish we had a section to review dealer SERVICE in particular. A section for sales and a section for service.

Sorry to hear those buttheads are losers to you today. I wouldn't waste more time, just find another dealer, why fight with losers?

 

my car is new and it's seems as it's out of alignment too.

 

DUDE my car came unaligned too and I had one weird curbed mark in which I think the dealer did, cause it was a dealer trade and it had 50 miles on it when it came back, your suppose to get 1 free alignment a year, well thats what they told me.

A LOT OF TOYOTA/SCION dealers are A$$ES, Especially the ones I dealt with. They get scared when its eval time though...

AND dessilu if your car is new and its unaligned they have to give you a free alignment that doesn't count towards the once per year.

 

um the manager said that the body roll caused the tires to wear? okay he just pulled that out of his ****! ahahah funniest thing I have heard EVER! hahaha..

help you out on tires? um, forget it. Why so this guy can get a profit on your loss? Take your car to a tire shop and get some toyo proxes4, and be done with bad tires. at least for about 25k miles. stock tires do suck, but that has nothing to do with wear patterns. fact is, your alignment WAS out, causing this wear, and lack of rotation killed them, period.

I don't think you're going to get ANYWHERE with toyota since your tires lasted this long and you didn't play by their rules of when to rotate them.

If you want some advice, I'd suggest you NOT go back to that dealer. Sounds like a bad bad place, lies everywhere and faulty work! Run as fast as you can away from there!!

Go get some Toyo Proxes4 from a tire shop (no, not this toyota dealer).. and be happy.

 

I will probally end up doing that, I don't want to see these people anymore.

 

I live in NY and travel a little of 30 mins. to work each day, I have hotchkis lowering springs and can see why you would hesitate on the springs. If it's something you are still considering then maybe I can give you some info.

As far as potholes, bumps. etc I have never had a problem. One time a didn't slow down as much as I should have for a speed bump in a parking lot and scraped the bottom of my Injen exhaust. But that would never happen to a stock exhaust.

Now winter time is a tad tricker. The only real problem I had was when we had a crazy snow storm, the plows where not out and I was coming from work. So I was the plow! The snow was coming over the hood onto the windshield and I was having one hell of a time keeping on the road. BUT, this is not an ordinary situation. I should not have been on the road. The rest of the winter was a cake, especially on my snows.

All and all, I would recommend lowers springs to anyone. Get rid of that ugly gap. If you can afford coilovers then by all means do so.

 

I'm glad they didn't screw up anything else.. but yeah when you're ready, let us know.. we can talk proxes4 tires.. Then again you can do a search and see what we (who have them) have said about them so far.

Glad you're not going back.. what a mess.

 

Actually this dealer did break my underbody neons while doing warranty work several months back...Guess that should have been a hint to get out, live and learn I guess.

If I do go springs in the future I decided on TRD drop, seems less extreme and easiest on stock shocks from what I read around here...but that won't be for a while, I have other expenses at this time.

 

so then my instincts were correct in thinking that they messed up stuff. glad you're going to stay away from them.

and definitely live and learn.