Landrey

I recently took the car in to Tires Plus for an alignment check (nothing wrong with it, I just like to get it checked every 6 months or so).
I am attaching a picture of the printout they gave me after they checked it and told me "All is good".
The way I read the printout the front left caster reading is out of limits (shows in the red) and I would assume it needs to be fixed. So I asked the guys there about it and they told me "Yeah, it's a little out of limits, but only by 1/10 of a degree, so it doesn't really need anything done about it"
I want to run this by any of you that have more experience than I do... Does this seem right? Isn't that what the toleranecs are for - if it is inside the tolerance - don't fix it, if it is outside the tolerance - needs fixing?
Any advise will be appreciated.
Thank You!

P.S. Just a couple of days ago I was driving on the highway and spun out after hitting some ice going 75mph... Car slid sideways for a bit... then off the road through some snow into the ditch... then turned some more and came to a rest rear-end-forward into about 2ft of snow. I was just happy not to have flipped over and that after that was able to just put it into 4WD and drive out and back on the highway with very little effort. Visual inspection and checking tire pressure, etc. I can't see any damage. Questions is - Do I need to get the alignment checked again after something like that?

farmerj

Mind you my memory is going back 18 years or so.

When I was getting trained on the alignment rack, we would often set the left an extra 1/10th to a 1/4 degree. Kind of depended on the car really.

It was to act against the road crown.

The big question is, How does it steer? We would test drive our cars and check the tracking which is effected the most by caster by taking our hands off the wheel to see how fast it would stray from the center of the lane.

Think about how those wonderful shopping carts track with the nice bent wheels. It's the caster in the front wheels that make it such a nightmare to push.

Flamedx4

Don't know what the specs are supposed to be - that alignment printout is pretty but not particularly informative.
Total agreement with farmerJ.
There should be more camber on the left, and I truly would not worry about 1/10 of a degree more.
But on the other hand, since they didn't set anything and you took it in for alignment, they either should have adjusted it to spec anyway or should have charged you accordingly.

mike_d

the specs are what toyota says the alignment should be, so they say something like 3+/-.2 degrees or something like that. but what you don't know is what the specs are for the measuring device used at the alignment shop. no measurment is done to infinite precision, maybe they only have the ability to measure +/-.5 degrees (for example). that means that when they say the caster is 3.3 degrees, is could be anywhere from 2.8 to 3.8 degees. so maybe the tech knows that the uncertanty in his measurement is more than the amount out of spec. also, i wouldn't worry about it if everything is running well.

Flamedx4

Clearly. But I don't happen to be up on the '99 specs...

The alignment sheets that I generally see show the Mfrs Specs, the "before" measurements, and the "after" measurements, all on the same sheet(s). Very handy. No nifty pictures though...

JohnM

Those alignment numbers look ok to me. Like FarmerJ said, if it tracks straight you're good...though I would add that keeping an eye on tire wear is a good idea.

Yes, I would check my alignment after doing donuts offroad at 75mph.