91 caprice has damaged its new front tires in under 3k...

[columnshift]

Alright so i'm a little demoralized with car problems at the moment... I have a 1991 chevy caprice with about 232k or something and i'm struggling to figure out my next steps.

I used to have a garage I took it to in the fargo/moorhead MN area but they started a policy of no longer working on any vehicle older than 1999 suddenly. So I took it to a newer mechanic friend in minneapolis who I thought was competent tho is 250 miles away making it difficult to get there. (I didnt have anyone else in town, and wasnt trying to make new in-town friends this late in the game because I was trying to sell the house and moving to continue with grad school hopefully next summer if things work out)

It was destroying the inside lip of the front tires (mostly the right was far worse than the inside left) last summer-fall, new mech friend said it was the ball joints which sounded credible to me, and he did the work because I was not physically and mentally able to do most things anymore. He said he did a diy tire alignment but the steering wheel no longer lined up - the top that should be 12 oclock pointing more to like 10 oclock but I know that can happen without a friend to help, and suggested I get a proper alignment when I could which would straighten up the wheel.

The vehicle was pulling fairly hard to the right but I thought that was just the self righting of the steering wheel explaining it (made sense to me at the time). I put on 4 brand new tires which solved most of the other "tire instability" feelings of the moment (they were so old and shoddy but I was struggling to limp on them until I could get things mechanically fixed) and drove it despite the pull because I could compensate for that.

Maybe 2000 miles later the inside lip of my right front tire is so bad I can see the cords. :-/ I almost didn't catch it but the vehicle was rapidly degrading in how hard it was pulling/made an appointment to see my friend 250mi away this strip down for medical reasons, and only because I pulled into the driveway turning the steering wheel sharp to the right, I came out, and saw the tire edge in the sunlight this time (which i'm positive wasn't this bad 500 miles ago - I checked air pressure and such on that side but it was an after sundown look so I wouldn't have noticed just uneven tire wear in the dark) and now i'm like what the crap...


So now i'm trying to figure out if the mechanic I saw is even competent - I have reason to believe he's competent at finding and replacing parts more than me but maybe wondering on his diagnosis. When I had the front of the car up 2000 miles ago I did not see obviously broken rubber bushings in the steering linkage, yanking on like the top of the tire I thought made a little click but there are not like obviously broken suspension parts or grossly out of alignment things. I would feel a "Squirrely" sensation in the tire on occasion going around a turn, especially if I hit a medium bump or uneven roads on the way - now most recently (last 250mi only/on the way back from minneapolis) I was feeling uneven squirrely feelings form that tire every time I was on mixed surfaces - like icey spots on the road. These feelings were not obvious on dry highway and except for the pulling the vehicle didn't feel bad in most driving. The only reason I didn't bring it back to him sooner to look at was that I couldn't replicate the squirrely sensation - nothing LOOKED wrong when I looked under there, and most surfaces didn't feel bad and I wasn't sure what surface would even trigger that feeling again in the wheel.

But something is clearly degrading or causing this and I need to give at least a close inspection, maybe take some pictures and share with you guys, to at least better diagnose what is going on.

I'm now a college student without a functioning vehicle and struggling between just junking what I have giving up on this or trying to fix this further throwing more money at things.

 

[Rand]

Did you ever get an alignment?

something is way off do the tires look flat(vertical?) do they tilt in?

 

[AZjeff]

He suggested you get a proper alignment and it sounds like you didn't. And steering wheels don't attempt to "self right".

 

[Propflux01]

From what it sounds like he wasn't too wrong in his diagnosis, but the combination of other worn parts, and his failure to notice them, along with your failure to get the vehicle aligned properly all came together to this. I would look at spending some cash for control arm bushings, tie rods, tires, stabilizer bar bushings, and a proper alignment. Either that, or junking the car.

 

[Number_35]

It could be toed-out on the R side. I would start with getting a trusted shop to check the alignment.

The are some very good Minnesota-based mechanics here on BITOG. I hope at least one of them will be able help you or point you to a good shop.

I bought a set of Tennhulzer alignment plates, and they have been a good investment.

 

[D60]

Irregular tire wear is typically caused by alignment or lack thereof.

You didn't get an alignment after front end work was performed.

The tires wore irregularly.

I mean....I dunno......do they have anything in college that deals with things occurring exactly as expected?

And 2000 miles is a lot to put on tires if the alignment is severely out. Any mechanic that tells you they did their best without an alignment rack just means it's good enough to drive straight to the nearest place with an alignment rack.

Perhaps the mechanic's mistake was not saying, "Go immediately and have it aligned." ??

 

[dumkid]

Whenever I do suspension work I tell people to not drive it until they're driving to an alignment shop. Unless I'm only doing shocks or some other work that won't throw off the alignment, or I'm confident that I didn't change the alignment (like doing tie rod ends and measuring to make sure the toe is in just a few mm) then I tell them that they should probably get an alignment or their tires might wear fast.

 

[eljefino]

Here's how you can do a DIY alignment check.

Get a laser level, about an 18 incher.

Put it on your front tire sidewalls at about 4- and 8 o'clock with the steering wheel straight. Aim at the same bulges on the rear tires. Should just barely miss... like by 1/4 to 1/2 inch.

There's trigonometry you can do to turn this into degrees to compare to the official spec, but I bet you're going to be INCHES out by this method.

Your mechanic is not competent, because he doesn't know what he doesn't know, and doesn't limit himself to what he can do correctly. Even if he can change front end parts, he and you don't have the relationship where you follow-up and do what's needed. In short, you need to work on your "adulting", not everybody you solicit work from is going to be your "friend."

Anyway you need an alignment. Find a guy who hangs a shingle that only does alignments. Get aligned on your bad tires then go get new ones. Don't get aligned at the tire shop.

Cars do pull to the right very slightly but it's because of the crown on the road which is meant for water run-off. It's not "in case you faint you won't hit on-coming traffic."

 

[3783-KC1]

Alignment. Had this issue when I tried to eyeball my 04' after replacing the rack and struts. The insides of the front tires wore at 3000 miles. Corrected it using a toe bar. It must be over a degree off to do that. Have a alignment done at a specialized alignment place. Make sure that the steering wheel is straight afterwards. It should have a very slight pull to the right most of the time if everything is in order. Road crowning ensures this.

 

[MParr]

Worn out suspension components and out of alignment.
How do you get 232,000 miles out of a car in Minnesota? There must be rust everywhere.
I’m sure that many of us would like to see pictures of the underside of your car.

 

[stevejones]

30 years old with a 1/4 million miles? EVERY original bushing & joint in the front suspension/steering is shot. Upper control arm bushings, lower control arm bushings, etc. etc. Doesn't matter what alignment is done, it won't hold as you go down the road.

 

[Astro14]

When your mechanic says you should get an alignment - but you don’t - I think it starts there.

When the car is on the rack, a good tech will see what else is loose as they try to bring it into spec.

IF the car were mine - I would replace everything - upper and lower control arm bushings, upper and lower ball joints, inner and outer tire rods, idler arm. Perhaps even springs. I did this, myself, including the springs, on my ‘77 Olds when it had about 180,000 miles. Dramatic difference. It drove like a new car afterwards.

You don’t realize how much the bit of wear in each component t adds up to very sloppy overall. Yep, it will cost some bucks to do this, but do it once, pay for one alignment, instead of several, and you will get better handling, a better ride, and it won’t eat tires in 2.000 miles

 

[joekingcorvette]

Always look at your car for a visual alignment inspection. If it was off that much you should be able to visually see that it is off even though you might not tell it on the steering wheel.

 

[wpod]

Here's how you can do a DIY alignment check.

Get a laser level, about an 18 incher.

Put it on your front tire sidewalls at about 4- and 8 o'clock with the steering wheel straight. Aim at the same bulges on the rear tires. Should just barely miss... like by 1/4 to 1/2 inch.

There's trigonometry you can do to turn this into degrees to compare to the official spec, but I bet you're going to be INCHES out by this method.

Your mechanic is not competent, because he doesn't know what he doesn't know, and doesn't limit himself to what he can do correctly. Even if he can change front end parts, he and you don't have the relationship where you follow-up and do what's needed. In short, you need to work on your "adulting", not everybody you solicit work from is going to be your "friend."

Anyway you need an alignment. Find a guy who hangs a shingle that only does alignments. Get aligned on your bad tires then go get new ones. Don't get aligned at the tire shop.

Cars do pull to the right very slightly but it's because of the crown on the road which is meant for water run-off. It's not "in case you faint you won't hit on-coming traffic."

Just bring the vehicle into a high quality shop that does front end repair , something is worn out and the old set of tires probably gave the same wear patterns.

 

[columnshift]

Did you ever get an alignment?

something is way off do the tires look flat(vertical?) do they tilt in?

He had said he aligned the front driveway mechanic style. I know this is a thing so I trusted it, like I remember reading how tos that you couldn't do a four wheel alignment and your steering wheel might be off without a friend to help things. (EDIT actually reading up a bit I see someone described the procedure, something like that is what he said he did) So I just assumed oh that's normal.

He test drove the car and told me things were normal, so I assumed he could feel the pull to the right too. He just suggested getting the alignment done sooner or later.

The thing is that what originally had me have him look at it was I could feel the steering wheel doing this bucking around jumping around kinda thing, it would jerk to the left, then to the right. THAT STOPPED after he worked on it, even with my ****ty tires. It just had the pull to the right. So I had reason to believe "oh it was the tie rod ends, which he just did". I then went and got tires - and that got rid of the vibration. So I thought "oh the rest of the funny feeling was the tires".

I didn't rush to get the alignment is he said it wasn't an insta-emergency, just sooner or later because he'd already did a home mechanic alignment. But then I felt an occasional funny squirrely sensation, on a handful of bumps only, and i'm like... I didnt want to waste another $50 on alignment (I tried to align it before the tie rod ends and I got charged and they said they couldnt align it) because I wanted to be sure nothing else was funny. But I couldn't recreate the driving conditions of what made that funny little squirrely wiggle feeling. I looked at the tires after the first two trips to and from minneapolis and they seemed to be fine so far - this all just degraded in like the last 1000 miles/last two trips, mostly the last. From "hmm now its feeling a little funnier when i'm on mixed surfaces/ice on one side dry on other", to "somethings not right". I couldn't get a chance to have him look at it on the trip down between those two.

So it snuck up on me. :-/


I guess i'm now also questioning his judgement, its that friend of a friend scenario. He always seemed to do good for that friend so I was assuming he was good at diagnosing, not just replacing parts. I can't do anything right now because I lost most of my ability to walk last fall after a cancer treatment, getting down on my knees to even check things is near impossible (takes a few minutes to get down and up to the ground like when I checked tire pressure, it's not easy) so my mind has been on wondering if i'll ever walk again normal instead of the car.

But what happened to the car happened and now i'm reassessing if spending more money on an old car is even worth it, if this didn't fix the problem, or if I dont' have anyone to bring it to whose not going to charge me $2-3000 to get the suspension back to working, when i'm wondering if a different car is a better recipient of the money than something giving me 15mpg around town. :-/

 

[Rand]

You seem unmechanically inclined.. I once had a GF whose whole family .. couldn't change a wiper blade or put air in a tire.
and they had 3 doctorates and a masters. It happens.

You sound overwhelmed and waffling
I'll keep it simple.
Start with alignment at an alignment shop.
make decisions after they tell you what is wrong with it and how much $$$

I guess i'm now also questioning his judgement,

Question your own judgement you made major mistake.. for whatever reason.
Good Alignment is required.
I guess he could have told you. Its ok to drive home but get it aligned asap.

 

[D60]

As much as it pains me to reference a clickbait hack like Kilmer, perhaps OP should watch the first couple minutes of this vid.

Note he says tires only wear this way if the alignment is off -- and he's right (wow, that hurt to say)


I don't understand this "friend" thing. OP, stop fixating on "friend." The mechanic is not your friend and he is NOT NOT your friend -- that's irrelevant. He worked on your car. Period. He should have been far more forceful about an alignment, but I wouldn't classify that as incompetence -- more of a social interaction problem.

 

[columnshift]

You seem unmechanically inclined.. I once had a GF whose whole family .. couldn't change a wiper blade or put air in a tire.
and they had 3 doctorates and a masters. It happens.

You sound overwhelmed and waffling
I'll keep it simple.
Start with alignment at an alignment shop.
make decisions after they tell you what is wrong with it and how much $$$



Question your own judgement you made major mistake.. for whatever reason.
Good Alignment is required.
I guess he could have told you. Its ok to drive home but get it aligned asap.

I was mechanically inclined for years then I had a brain tumor and surgery and some things I used to be able to do became more difficult after they cut on my brain, sometimes i'm literally holding the tool and then realizing I dont know how to do this anymore/the procedural memory for some things is gone. I'm sorry if i'm frustrating to deal with at times but i'm not doing it intentionally is all i'm telling you. I'm already being forced to lose my house over uncovered medical bills so my stress level is not exactly making me level headed - I can admit that too. I'm not looking for what to blame, i'm looking for what I can still fix from here and maybe thats distrust the mechanic I thought was good to start. Or maybe thats distrusting my own problem solving ability because maybe i'm more impaired than I thought and i'm not feeling it.

I dont want to focus on this but I feel I need to explain to people getting frustrated trying to communicate with me. I'm not intentionally doing it. Back to the car.


I can only re-say what I already said, I think anyway... I took it to an alignment shop originally and they said they were unable to align it, so I took it to my mechanic since I knew I couldnt do the job and said "tell me why it wont hold alignment" and he said it looks like the tie rod ends primarily. So I said just fix everything you think necessary at the minimum so I don't destroy a new set of tires on it and he said okay and he looked at things when under there and saw nothing else wrong. So question #1 I guess "what else SHOULD he have seen if he was competent vs what else could still cause this which WOULDNT be visible to a driveway mechanic?" Whether I bring it back to him, or try to find someone else, i'm going to be comparing notes - do you see anything broken and not just worn? Is that something NEW or was it probably broken then but there was no way to easily see or diagnose that so it's forgiveable?

After he did his work the car drove noticibly better except for the pull to the right. Well i've felt a pull on a car that went away just by swapping the tires left to right before so yeah I didn't worry about it at the time. He drove it himself and must've felt it and chose not to say anything which is question #2. His only advice about alignment amounted to "often around new years people will have a coupon for a discount, maybe watch for that and try to get that done in the next 2-3 months or so." I was following that advice, it wasn't "drive immediately to the alignment shop or it will kill the new tires" because he said he already did a laser type driveway alignment similar to what someone described above. Maybe that was poop quality advice but I was following it.

Then I put on new tires and it drove even better so I thought i'd be fine - a vibration i'd felt was probably the tire being out of balance. A pull, but smooth driving. Grinding my face into "you shoulda insta-done an alignment anyways you danged fool" is not terribly helpful because I can't see how i'm supposed to have known or assumed that. I knew you had to align after suspension work - he said he did.


Now I already know it's going to fail an alignment because something else is clearly not okay. I'm trying to figure out what the potential things wrong could be - if I can inspect them myself. Take some pictures under the car, maybe post them here. If it's just one other part then i'd get that replaced. If it's going to be $1000+ more "replace every single suspension bushing" to get it to not destroy a set of tires, the car still has other niggling problems like a leaking radiator and things that make me wonder if the money is better put to a different car - cut my losses, shouldn't have repaired it or got new tires at all, even if I can't see how I could have known that trying to follow the advice I got. That's what i'm FEELING right now in frustration which is why i'm hesitant to go start another going-nowhere cycle of "is this ever going to end?" Maybe this isn't the right car to last the next few years and that's my real problem.


I'm going on too long about this but trying to explain or answer misunderstandings.

It's all about i'm trying to decide between my choices of 1) continue repairs on this vehicle WITH him, 2) find a new mechanic WITH this vehicle, or 3) find a different car entirely and stop throwing money at 33 year old stuff which even if I fix the suspension doesnt mean the rest of the car is perfect and trouble free - this is more the daily beater, not the keeper. "How much more" I expect to have to spend afterwards matters alot. If i'd known it would still eat tires after I would have already junked it. After I figure out which of those three strategies is the best i'm either looking for an alignment shop or a different mechanic or a different car. Right now i'm just stressed to ____ and trying to avoid making a decision out of rage or frustration or distrust. And I put the car up on ramps for the first day that's not so cold here to take another look with a shop light and see if there's anything red flag obvious to start.


Pouring salt in the wounds isn't helping. Maybe he never aligned it at all? Maybe he didn't even do the job he was paid for? Except it drove much better after he did. That's what i'm saying - i'm being forced to re-ask questions I wasn't originally re-asking about all this. His competence, whether the car is worth throwing any more money into at all, etc, and yes it's getting me stuck in a mental loop before I can even take a next act right now.

Until it's warm enough to take pictures without my hands hurting i'm taking a time out then i'll recheck the board to see if people had specific suggestions, ie show the sway bar bushing from this angle or the steering knuckle or whatever. All I know is that if every wear part is bad i'm pretty sure the car is going to just be junked, it's too much of a wildcard that it will last even doing that anyway. Maybe thats an automatic assumption on any 33 year old car.

 

[AZjeff]

Maybe thats an automatic assumption on any 33 year old car.

It is on a Caprice with 232,000 miles on it unless you know it's maintenance history. Work on finding a mechanic who isn't 250 miles away. Work on finding an alignment shop who will tell you what they see needs replaced if they can't align it. Don't tell them the whole backstory, it doesn't matter.

Sorry for your health problems.

 

[Rand]

I get you have questions and are trying to find answers.. quite a few people in this thread gave you good answers.. then you say the same thing again.

You seem stuck on the last guy that worked on your car.
you dont need to know what the last guy did at all.

You need an alignment and front end diagnosis to form any sort of good decision and go from there. That isnt $3000

If you buy a car the proper prepurchase inspection will cost the same or more.

I dont think anyone is trying to pour on salt or crap on you. They are trying to help you.