Wheel alignment issue after dealer suspension repair

[Highlander]

Do we need to make excuses for dealers?

Who would replace top strut mounts and not check the wheel alignment? Pretty basic mechanics.

At the very least one would expect the vehicle to be road tested after the repair and the road tester to have noticed a badly crabbing vehicle.

Wonder if it was not a warranty job would the wheel alignment be neglected. Methinks not.

Drove my brand new MY10 Passat CC straight from the dealers to my steering shop and had the wheel alignment done and you guessed it, the toe was out. The predelivery sheet category "steering alignment" was ticked as checked OK.

Another thread on this site indicates that misaligned new VWs are the rule rather than the exception.

Told the dealer and was met with a shrug of the shoulders. Expensive shrug that one - cost them the service on my car for the next three to five years.

[pologti18t]

Drove my brand new MY10 Passat CC straight from the dealers to my steering shop and had the wheel alignment done and you guessed it, the toe was out. The predelivery sheet category "steering alignment" was ticked as checked OK.

Had the same issue with my new Polo GTI. Alignment was out from new.

[Idle]

Doesn't only happen with VW.

Our second car is a Yaris YRS (2 months old), as delivered it steered like a supermarket trolley — driving was downright tiring.

At the "complimentary" 1000k service I had them check it, they said it needed a "minor adjustment" — now handles nicely.

And yes, steering alignment was checked off on the pre-delivery sheet. The more they can do with a pencil and the less with a spanner, the more they get to keep of the dealer delivery charge, I guess.

I wonder how many people just accept this kind of thing as normal and never complain?

[EUS GTIMK5]

Slightly off topic but you'll find poor workmanship everywhere. Recently had some damage repaired, woman ran into rear passenger side. Here a copy of what is wrong, after it was repaired.

Copy of email sent to insurer -

"after receiving my car back from the repairers (XXXXXXX) I reported that there were a few issues that needed to be rectified. These were –
1. A groaning sound coming from the rear suspension of the car. I had Pedders Suspension look at this and they discovered that the rear sway bar links had been fitted incorrectly and were bent and need to be replaced. A report is attached.
2. Pedders also found that the passenger side rear shock absorber is making a knocking sound and should be replaced. This was also damaged in the crash and needs to be replaced.
3. Pedders also did a full wheel alignment as it this was also out. I was told by the original repairer (XXXXXXX) that a full wheel alignment was done. However, this seems not to have been the case.
4. The passenger rear guard panel that had been repaired is very rough under the guard. It has not been finished off properly. This will need to be fixed.
5. There is a slight amount of over spray on the opposite side rear tail light. This will need to be fixed

As you can see I am not very happy with this and as XXXXXX are so far away from where I live I want these issues rectified at a local repairer. If you want an assessor to inspect the car please give me a call.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
"

The repairer was supposed to specialise in euro cars! So as you can see there seems to be an attitude with some people to just get it out the door even if it is not fixed properly.

[Schultz]

if the car was crabbing.....the steering wheel wouldve had to have been off centre.......
if this had been corrected to compensate then they know blQQdy well that there was something out after the work was done......
and they tried to avoid a 15 minute wheel alignment by possibly just popping the wheel off and correcting it.....
or by stuffing around with the tie rods to simply straighten the steering wheel without correcting the alignment issues...

look for fresh spanner marks on the tierods to see if they played around with the alignment.....