Can minor curb bump move rear

If you hit them hard enough on the rear on one side it can tweak the frame rail back ever so slightly. This effects the front alignment.

 

Learned something new!

 

I haven't had an front end alignment since buying my KO2s 3 years ago.
I get an oil change about once a year at the dealership.
I've yet to be told I need another one at my oil changes or tire rotations.

I though it was pretty cool when I asked them what I just drove thru..

Another point, I'd never buy tires from the dealership.
I get them from Discount Tire, and they don't do alignments..

 

Your philosophy is similar to mine, except no dealer or service outlet ever touches my cars normally. There has to be an expensive warranty repair or a recall needed.

My practice on wheel alignment is even tighter: I do not allow front wheel alignments in normal use EVER. My life experience has been that factory alignment is as good as it will ever be unless you have a front end collision. (In the OP's case, a crooked steering wheel is misalignment, blame it on Covid-19 and poor quality control.) Most service alignment techs, at least until the automated laser era, weren't qualified to be changing front end alignments. Your alignment was more likely to be worse after alignment, than it was before.

If a dealer told me the drive-through machine said my truck needed alignment, I would tell them to "GFY, I'll watch for tire wear and poor drivability".

 

Some of what you said is correct and some is not so correct. Alignments are only as good as the person performing them. Like everything in this world there are people in some occupations that just don't do a very good job. Tundra and Tacoma have a issue of wearing tires on the outside edge of the tire over a long period of time. The outside edge of the tire 'becomes 'feather edged" and can be corrected by changing the camber to a less positive number. Also if you live in an area that uses road salt in the winter the Tundra and Tacoma adjustment cams will seize after a very short period of time. When you do need an alignment for whatever reason it becomes very expensive because of the high labour to replace the adjusters. First thing I always suggest to people when buying a Tundra or Tacoma is to have the adjusters removed, apply lots of never seize, reinstall and have and alignment done settings the camber close to zero.

 

I get it.

Dealer didn't tell me to drive thru anything.
There are 3 entrances into the service department, each entrance has one of the these machines.
I'd bet 95% of their customers don't even realize the machines are there.
I don't have the time or desire to do my oil changes, I'd rather the dealer do them than Jiffy Lube.
Might as well have them rotate the tries when they do the oil change.
The less I time I have to spend on my failing knees, the better.

I think I've only had one alignment since buying this truck in 2014.
I ran over some speed bumps in the Lowes parking lot a bit fast and the truck started pulling to the left.
The dealership aligned it, and that fixed that.

Well, I actually had 2 alignments, that one and when I had my 6112s installed.
That guy was old school, no automated alignment anything in his shop..

 

All of what I said is true for the time it was experienced, and in the climate it was experienced.

I've spent most of life in Texas, with a few years in Ohio, and a couple in upstate New York. I changed cars often enough that I never experienced "frozen" adjusters or the expense. However, it only took a couple of manual alignment ****ups on a 66 Chevy for me to realize that most pretending "alignment techs" were inexperienced and unskilled.

I finally found an old guy in downtown Cincinnati, OH that knew what the hell he was doing. He had one of those dark downtown garages, but inside, it had state-of-the-art equipment for 1968. He quickly diagnosed the steering gear as being off center. He reset the steering gear to center (not normally required), adjusted caster, camber, and tow. The car drove like new. That lasted for years until a front end collision (ice on road, guy turned left in front of me, totally unavoidable).

Tundras may be a special case regarding camber. If I'm able to drive the Tundra long enough (my limitation, not the Tundras), I'll confirm your information about excessive camber. If the factory specs are wrong for Tundra wearing tires, then that is on Toyota. No doubt it is a calculated engineering decision to achieve another objective. That wasn't true on my previous Toyota truck, an 86 4Runner. IIRC, that truck required one front end alignment over 31 years, and that alignment was required by a front end collision (shared responsibility). That realignment worked out OK.

I'm not going to Goodyear to ask them if I need an alignment. I can already predict that I will definitely need an alignment, and it will probably drive worse, and wear tires worse afterwards. At the factory, I would argue that initial alignment is done with modern automated laser-driven equipment that requires minimal human input or skill. Toyota likely only needs a semi-skilled line worker there to loosen and tighten fasteners when the machine says.

The good news is...Most modern alignment equipment can now be described like that, and minimal skill and experience is required for operation. My mantra..."If it ain't broke, don't screw with it".

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging anyone for letting someone else do the grunt work. It's a bad thing for me that I am unable to relinquish that little control in order to achieve the exact outcome that I want.

 

I've been aligning vehicles for 30 years. Owned a alignment shop for 13 years and finished my career with Toyota. Modern alignment equipment doesn't make the alignment easier. It makes getting the numbers up quicker but doing the adjusting is still the same. A good alignment tech can test drive a vehicle and can diag many issues even before the alignment numbers are brought up. Unfortunately many techs just just read numbers and adjust to factory specs but don't have a clue how to judge tire wear or solve driveability issue when alignment numbers are good. Tacoma and Tundra tend to feather edge their tires and with some slight adjustments it can be prevented. Most customers and many techs are unable to read tire wear. Get a good alignment tech and a proper alignment and you will be amazed how well your truck will drive and handle.

 

You sound like the old guy I discovered in Cincinnati. I would have paid twice the going rate for his alignment, but once he retired, he was done.

Unfortunately, finding him was blind luck, and I'm too old and impatient to be evaluating a procession of incompetent "wannabees" at my expense. My truck already drives and handles amazing. It would never be the same once some incompetent clown tinkers with it. The Tundra front suspension is robustly engineered. It shouldn't get knocked out of alignment easily. My advice to anyone on front end alignment is don't get it done without very good reason; i.e. wearing tires quickly or it drives poorly (uncentered steering wheel would fit here).

 

Yup 57 year old guy. Find a good alignment tech can be difficult but they are out there. The guy that replaced me is a guy that I trained for five years before I left. I actually had him do my alignment on my Tundra after I removed the adjusters and lubed them up. Your right in that if the truck is not have any tire wear and your wheel is bang on don't roll the dice and have the alignment done. My own Tundra had a very slight tire wear on the outside edge where the tread was just starting to feather edge. I decided to lube my adjusters and get the alignment done. If you ever require an alignment bring in your own numbers and get a printout of the final numbers when done.

 

Lololol really dude?

 

What am I missing?

 

It could be a commentary on our age.

Or, maybe that we've hijacked a thread that was fully exhausted and dead-ended.