Mechanics Fault or Not?

Hello all! Hope you all were able to get a long weekend.

Here's my case. Up here in MT and just had my seasonal tire change over at a local shop and used the same summer tires that I used last year. My truck drove straight last summer with the same tries, drove straight with my new winter tires, and now with my reused summer tires...not so much. Went on a quick 600 mile road trip for the weekend and holy f*@k does my truck pull hard left. Fought it the hole drive which was quite annoying until there was a left turn and I could let go of the wheel and let the truck do it for me ... Yikes.

Called back to the same shop, told them the situation, got an appointment for an alignment today. Went in to get my truck back and they told me that they couldn't complete the alignment because I needed new inner and outer tie rods. Got out of the shop and looks like they tried to break them free, couldn't, and gave up (photos below).

Soooo, I'm feeling like something kind of fishy has gone down. No problems whatsoever with alignment before and then all of a sudden a hard pull left right after my change over.

What do you guys recommend? I do need to put new pads on soon, so should I play around with rotating the wheels to see if that helps? Also, do you all think that I need new tie rods?

Thanks in advanced for any solutions or wisdom and for reading this post!

 

Never go to that shop again. They took it for a joy ride at tire change over then screwed up your front end and who knows what else. They couldn't do the alignment because they were using $5 tools from Kmart and are total imbeciles.

 

Ditto. Hopefully they didn’t screw up your rig, looks like they used pliers to “adjust” the tie rods.

 

Thought popped into my head; Make sure your 4x4 still works and no problems with front axles. Don't know what you'd have to do / hit hard enough to screw up an alignment that bad, but they did something. I'd be underneath checking everything nose to tail. Not sure what recourse you have with the shop though. Sucks you can't trust ANYONE to be a decent human being these days. Best of luck to you on this.

 

Never go there again. You can see they did not even spray lubricant on the correct threaded part then used the wrong tools to break it free. If it was a problem they should have pulled you into the shop to show you they cant do the alignment and ask you how you want to proceed. Idiots…

 

Not to say that the shop doesn't suck, bc sounds like they do, but did you keep track which tires where on which wheels when you took them off last year? That can cause that issue as well if the fronts got mixed up or mismatched

 

This ^^^^^^^^ go to a different shop and have the alignment angles checked and the tires inspected (pressures)

This is the goofiest thing I've read on here in ages.....LOL You have NO idea where this shop bought tools or the proficiency of the techs that work there. You have NO idea that they even test drove the car, let alone took it for a joy ride. Pure speculation, an assumption made without ANY basis in fact ......(shaking my head)

PS....On the rare occasion that I take any of my cars to the "shop", I zero the "B" trip meter which will record the mileage driven while in their facility. Answers the question; was it test driven and how far (but not how)

 

No I didn't. I used this shop for all my mechanical needs for the past year. So I thought that the would have marked it themselves. It does look like one of the old front tires is now rear left. This was my initial place to start.

 

I know...saw that and cursed the shop haha

 

I especially like the vice grip marks

 

Otay, doofus. I know they are imbeciles because I can see what they did to the hardware on the truck with their collection of $5 tools. Further, if the vehicle handles wildly differently after worked on it than before, it is a safe bet they were screwing around with it and knocked something out of whack. It isn't hard to fill in the blanks if you have an IQ over 5.

Change your bong water, man.

 

Stuck tie rods are not uncommon. You need heat, lots of heat, pipe wrenches, and penetrating oil. Be patient and they will break free. I ran into the local Toyota dealership pulling the same card on me. Went home and broke em free in my driveway. Took it back and got my f'n alignment done.

 

It sounds like what's referred to as a "radial pull". It can happen when you put a tire on the left that has been run on the right, and vice versa. In the old glass belted radial days, the cords would bunch up and cause some serious problems. With steel belted radials, the damage is less obvious but just as troubling. You can try swapping them around to see if you can eliminate the pull, but my bet is that you'll end up buying new tires. The risk of problems on the highway aren't worth it. As for the shop, there's probably little you can do without incurring a large legal bill, but I'd be sure to warn all of my friends about their obvious lack of skill and concern for their customer's safety, not to mention property.

 

Before swapping tires around, check the air pressure. Someone else mentioned it and I can second it after a strong pull with new tires. Uneven pressure and once I got the psi right the pull was gone.