Air suspension alignment?

[mtbutler93]

Do i have to get my LR3 aligned byt the dealer due to the air suspension? I've taken it to a few shops and they mentioned they do not work on LR3's due to the complexity of the alignment job?

Curious as my dealer is quoting highway robbery fee of $400 to align the LR3.

Also if any shop should be able to, does anyone have suggestions for a shop in the Silicon valley area?

Thanks,

 

[roverman]

Are you talking about wheel alignment? My dealer was very forthcoming and said that they just sent it out to do it anyway. So I went to belle tire and got it done for $80.
You know, at first belle tire said they didn't do it, but when I told them that LR told me their 'secret' they went ahead and did it. Call around...

Also, yes your dealer is a hwy robber, mine was gonna charge about 180 if i recall.

 

[bobby]

i agree with roverman way over priced. my dealer was also forth coming with the local tire shop that does there alignments. turns out the dealer was only adding a ten dollar service charge anyway. 89 bucks out the door.

 

[jimzigg]

i just had a 4 wheel alignment done at local dealer (i waited for it) for $119 to correct negative rear camber caussing uneven tire wear (boy i am sure some of you have heard that before). anyway, that is way cheap for this service as the dealer i bought lr3 from charges double that.

 

[mtbutler93]

Thanks, i have experienced the negative rear camber and gone thru 2 pairs of goodyears by 50k miles. Anyone have the alignment specs for an LR3? ie what do i tell the shop to adjust the rear wheels too, to eliminate the negative rear camber?

 

[jimzigg]

wish i could help on the specs, but i trusted my dealer to tell me it was out and to put it back into whatever proper tolerance was. i can tell visually that negative camber is no longer evident so i am happy. it was pretty obvious. i was only able to find on the web some detailed technician procedure manual but i dont believe it had tolerances. someone i thought had posted them once on here. maybe do a search?
also, if you are not aware already, there is a class action lawsuit on the issue that i have joined. you may be able to get some comp for your tires.
http://www.sfmslaw.com/pages/cases.php?id=234

 

[gamman3]

in canada, I am about to pay $250. I have to get the suspension to "stiff" mode, as my local tire shop couldn't get the LR3 to stop moving or get to the low setting or whatever. Anyone know how to get that done, so my $100 guys can do it? They don't know. They dont' do cars with sophisticated suspensions.

The local dealer rep did tell me they don't do the alignment either. THey do the stiff setting on the computer (OBD or whatever) and they then ship it to a favorite alignment shop. I was trying to see if I can save the $60 to set it to firm/stiff, and then save $50 or so on the actual alignment itself.

 

[Houm_WA]

"stiff setting"

When I got new wheels, the shop said something similar; they asked me to "lock" the air compressor, citing that in previous work the vehicle would not stop trying to move around. The best I could do was lock the LR3 in Access mode; this seemed to work.

It's interesting, it seemed like once on the trail I was trying to change a tire and putting the vehicle in Access mode was best, although the manual recommends off-road height. Now, I think that in our mind we wanted to get the jack firmly in place quicker and so being in access height made sense; but recently I changed all 4 tires at the same time and putting it in off-road height was much better; and this stands to reason since you have to raise the vehicle through that 4 inches anyway....might as well do it without resistance. That said, it was a different task doing it off-road on a slight incline vs. on nice dry flat pavement!

That anecdote had little to do with your question; just try locking it into Crawl Mode (Access height) and see if that does the trick.

 

[roverman]

$250 canadian?? Wow, that's like what $900 American nowadays...sigh...

 

[gamman3]

Crawl Mode (Access height) and see if that does the trick.

Thanks, will try that. $100 is $100.