It is not just tire wear. If the control arm bushings are shot, you will never get a good alignment. That is why they refused the job. Had they done the work you wanted they would risk liability if later you had an accident.
This car could be dangerous and that is why they want the control arms replaced first. Only they would know…they inspected it. We can only guess.
Take @Shadowfax 's advise. Replace the control arms to save money and then take it in for an alignment.
There are too many variables in alignment to just adjust the tie rod ends and expect to get the other adjustments correct.
But why would the tires start wearing away now when they hadnt before when it had faulty parts???
Because you messed with it. Once you started working on suspension components you committed yourself to needing an alignment. You may or may not have needed an alignment before that. It’s entirely possible your tires were wearing prematurely, and you either didn’t notice or they prematurely wore evenly so that you thought they were just wearing normally.
It’s also possible that your alignment was fine before, but now you have replaced a tie rod and the likelihood that it is still in alignment now is remote.
If you are looking for anyone here who has advised you to fix it right to agree with your approach, I think you will be disappointed. You can probably get by with the fast-and-dirty methods for setting toe presented here, for a while at least, but you risk even greater expense in the future, if not catastrophic failure of some suspension component.
But why would the tires start wearing away now when they hadnt before when it had faulty parts???
Think of it like a sharp pencil. After you use it a bit in one position, the flat part is in contact with the paper and makes a wide mark and wears more slowly. Now rotate it a bit and apply the same pressure when writing. The smaller contact patch wears away much faster until it is again a flat wide mark. Your tires are doing the same thing…
It’s been explained to you. You’re rejecting the explanation in the hopes that someone will finally tell you what you want to be told. That’s not going to happen. If you were just risking destroying your car then I’d be first in line to tell you to do whatever you want.
But if you screw around with putting off repairs of parts that keep your car going in the direction you point it, and they break, it’s not just you and your stuff that’s in danger, but everyone around you on the road.
Couple of years ago I had some yahoo almost plow into me at a stoplight because his ball joint broke and made him lose control. His car scraped to a stop about 6 inches from my rear wheel. That guy decided to defer necessary maintenance to save a little money, and if he had hit me it would have backfired bigtime because my insurance company would have sued him into oblivion. As it was, he had body damage to repair in addition to the other stuff that he broke when the part he should have already replaced broke.
That guy was a real moron. Don’t be like that guy.
Every time I read a thread like like this I scratch my head & wonder why all states don’t have a yearly state inspection requirement . People that don’t want to drive a safe vehicle are a danger to themselves & everyone around them .
I do practically all of my own vehicle repairs I can but if a pro is needed , a pro it is .
Well, let’s not jump to conclusions on safety with the OP. An alignment guy will reject a car as not being able to guarantee it will hold alignment WAY before there is any safety concern.
Only because it will wear tires faster, that is not in of itself a safety concern. Naturally, if they are seriously degraded, that is a different story. But you can be rejected by an alignment guy for very little slop in the bushings…
Perhaps the ball joints have play, how much? Some techs will condemn ball joints if there is any play. Unless the play is excessive and obvious it should be measured with a dial indicator. The limit is .060".
I had to replace the bushings in my '05 TB. It’s not a difficult job. Personally, if you’re doing the arm bushings, you might as well put in an new ball joint too. Parts are not expensive but you need special tools to press the ball joint out/in…they may sell an arm loaded but you’ll pay for that option.
Just got a curiosity shot from reading this thread, if the steering wheel isn’t centered (like it should be when driving straight ahead), and there are no other symptoms, tire wear and tracking was fine, how would a person tell if the steering wheel problem was that the tie rods were mis-adjusted or that the steering wheel was just not placed on the steering column correctly?
There is a possibility of someone changing the position of the steering wheel during remove on some cars, some have an index in the splines. That is the least likely cause. When a car comes in with the steering wheel off-center I check for damage to the steering and suspension.
The the OP’s case we know the position of one tie rod end has been moved.
I think on older cars it was possible to shift the steering wheel but the last time I tried that, it didn’t work due to the other components the wheel had to align with. No idea what it would be like with air bags now.
Just as a comment though, I think there are a few teachers on here and a few engineers and a few software guys and maybe even a closet lawyer. So you tend to get some well rounded advice.
I haven’t seen a wheel that can be installed in anything but one position for a long time now. If the column was separated from the rack/box, then you could get it misaligned. But the reason was known, tie rod replacement without keeping the relationship the same…
The wheel on my '91 CRX can be (and often to my great annoyance has been by an oblivious me) installed crooked. That’s a pre-airbag car, though, which simplifies what’s going on under the horn cover quite a bit.
