Alignments frustrate me. The technicians rarely adjust anything but toe. I try to find local ALIGNMENT shops with old crusty guys with race trucks out back working the garage who take more than fifteen minutes to do an ALIGNMENT. That was fast? You should not be saying that after getting an alignment. If they respond "that's within the specification" I respond with bye bye.
God help you if you have to show them the alignment adjustments on a light racing uca....
To be fair, almost all cars these days have nothing to adjust BUT front Toe (maybe rear toe if you're lucky.) So at work I am knocking out alignments pretty quickly because we can't adjust camber/caster on most of our vehicles (we sorta can, but at that point it's "jury-rigging" and Toyota would frown upon that.) But when it comes to the double wishbone set-ups like our Toyota trucks/SUVs I do try to get the camber/caster bias within about .5 if not as close to even as I can; otherwise I'll let it slide (because to be honest sometimes you'll spend half an hour to adjust camber/caster to within .3 from .5 and end up .6 or more out.)
I'm brining it back in today to get it checked, is there anything I should say while I'm there? Should I be mentioning that they mostly just adjusted toe?
Edit: so they gave it back to me, said they swapped the front tires and took it for a ride and now it doesn't pull. I looked at the tires (I've driven probably 600 miles) and the little nubs that wear off after a couple hundred miles are gone on the outsides of the tires and still sticking out on the inside. I called them and they said camber adjustment isn't included in their regular alignment. I'm having them call corporate because they didn't tell me that when they sold me on the tire/alignment package. I'm probably going to go elsewhere for an alignment at this point...
Honestly that makes no sense to me, if they are advertising a 4-Wheel Alignment, then they better damn well adjust all adjustable items if they are not within specification! Though in your particular case I will be honest and say that Caster is perfectly acceptable to me (.1 deviation is pretty good actually) and that Camber is pretty close (it's within my .5 rule, though that left side is on the edge) so unless the customer was complaining about pull or wandering I honestly might not touch it because I'd end up doing more harm than good.
All that being said, I would like to see Caster closer to 3° as it helps these vehicles handle a bit better (but that's not always easily attainable on a stock set-up.) I'm wondering if the steering wheel was truly centered when they did the alignment, I've had it once or twice where the stupid steering wheel holder slipped and the wheel was just a hair off and I set the vehicle straight ahead when the steering wheel was really at the 11:55 position instead of a true 12 o'clock position.
Worked at Toyota a couple years and honestly 4runners are stupid hard to align. As I said earlier, that shop adjusted Toe and sent you on. That's the absolute wrong way to do a 4Runner alignment.
When I was doing them it was in the following order: Caster, Camber, Caster, Camber, Toe, Caster, Camber, Toe. And then if things still weren't good to go, repeat the last three until getting it as close as possible. Most 4runners are about a 1.5-2hr job on the alignment rack if they've had any lifting done or front end damage.
Good, I thought it was just me. Besides the added adjustability factor of the LR UCA's on mine, I thought I was spending way to much time on the rack tweaking the settings.
Yeah, you two aren't crazy; I end up on the rack when I am tweaking my 4Runner's alignment at least half an hour or more. The constant battle of dialing in Camber and Caster is a pain as you end up doing it at least twice before it's where it needs to be and then you do toe and if you're lucky you don't have to start all-over again! :redbrick:
What's even worse is that our alignment rack's center lift is painfully slow and a bit on the weak side and it can barely get my tires to not touch the plates when I have it jacked up (I really need to weld up some extensions to put on the jack for doing my lifts.) I actually smashed my hand pretty good once because the jack wasn't as high as it could be and I was doing a Camber/Caster adjustment and the cam rolled over and jammed my hand between the frame with my wrench. That hurt...
So if I just adjusted camber myself, would I end up with toe and caster out of spec?
Honestly, with the measurements you're showing I don't know if I would mess with the alignment (assuming they are correct) at home; they're almost equal on both sides, so unless I could see the measurements as I manipulate them, you might put it all out of whack more.
