Alignment Problems: Need Your Opinions

[mikecost]

'02 ES 300 88,000 miles with new tires, discs, pads, calipers and recent alignment and balanced performed. A Firestone dealer balanced the tires, but I'm still getting some steering wheel shimmy at 70-80 mph. Any ideas?

They said "so don't drive 80 mph" which is of course an unexceptable answer. The wheels balance at 55 mph, so do I need to find a service that will do high speed balancing? By the way, they also checked for any loose front end parts and could not find anything loose.

[steviej]

Take it to another shop, a shop that has a Hunter Road Force balance machine.

Have the tire rebalanced under force and have the car realigned.

Get a printout of the before and after specs. If the before specs are incorrect or out of spec, then take the information to Firestone and ask for your money back on at least the service(s) that are incorrect. Threaten smail claims court if you have to.

If the services are done correctly, there should be no shimmy. Just out of curiousity, was there shimmy before the whole service work.

steviej

[SW03ES]

These cars are really hard to get a good balance.

What kind of tires?

If it just won't balance, one of the tires might be out of round. Some brands of tires are harder to balance also.