Hello everyone. Hope everyone is well and preparing for the holiday.
As the title states, can any shop perform an alignment on a Lexus ?
The reason I’m asking is because mavis did an alignment 2 years ago for $89 which I thought was a reasonable price. However, I had a weird experience with the steering wheel pulling ( grabbing ) when accelerating above 65mph and brought the car into the Lexus dealership where they said my car needed an alignment and the price was outrageous at $190
The pulling and grabbing symptom seems to have been eliminated as I haven’t felt it since my last visit at the Lexus dealership.
I want to save money but at the same time I want to make sure other shops can perform an alignment just as good as the dealer.
There is no guarantee that an independent shop can do it right, but then not all dealers get it right either. It depends on the calibration of their alignment rack the skill of the technician.
If you are not having any drivability issues like pulling to one side or instability and your tires are not wearing out prematurely or unevenly, then I would suggest that you leave things alone. Alignments don’t just go out over time, They go out when you have hit something very hard. It is not a regular maintenance item.
I have had several vehicles that never needed an alignment in their lifetime and some I’ve put well over 200k miles on them. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Do not let a tire shop tell you that you need an alignment for the warrantee on the new tires to be valid. Also in my experience, a tire shop is the worse place to get an alignment. Don’t even allow them to do a “courtesy check”.
No. Use a local, independent shop with a good reputation that specializes in alignment. One of the ones near me had a telling name - “Bob’s Wheel Alignment” - where you can actually talk to “Bob” (or his son). And it’s been in business with a good rep for over 30 years. That kind of place.