tl;dr -- cliffs :

After getting an alignment done the car feels like it has a lot more body roll in it than before I brought it in, as if a sway-bar or two were removed in the process. The sway bars are nonetheless intact, as are the end-links the best I can tell. Can anyone venture to guess what may have been screwed up / broken ?

Alignment results (degrees):
Front left, right camber : -1.4, -1.3
Front left, right caster : 8.3, 8.8
Front left, right toe : -0.05, 0.08

Rear left, right camber : -2.3, -2.4
Rear left, right toe : 0.2, 0.21


A little background (story time! -- optional) :

I go in for an alignment and the workers sweat their backs off trying to get the front cam bolts loosened, eventually succeed and set them to -1.4 on both sides. In an attempt to adjust the front toe however, they deem the front left tie rod to be seized, leaving the left set to -0.81 (toe out), and the right untouched @ 0.16 (toe in).

Two days go by and I get a replacement tie rod (inner & outer) for them to replace with and finish up the alignment. The front camber somehow straightened out a bit to ~-1.1 on both sides, so they re-set that to what I desired. Continuing with the alignment, apparently the front right tie rod is seized as well, but it's already adjusted to where I want it, so it is left alone. I wanted to lessen the caster angle, but apparently it won't go any lower. The rear right camber won't straighten out any further either, so I just have them equalize the left.

After three hours, all is said and done. I get out of the parking lot and I immediately feel a regular thump in the front left. I turn back around and come to find out the guy accidentally banged the edge of the brake rotor with a hammer. Apparently the thump was from a raised lip from the point of impact. Fortunately by the time I got home the thump went away.

As I get on the road, I start testing out the alignment by doing some controlled swerving. This is where I notice what feels like excessive roll. My first instinct was the hammer might have hit an endlink as well. As far as I can tell, this is not the case. I think the body roll is bad enough that it is adversely affecting turning ability. Some of the turns that I know I can take confidently without tripping DSC manage to trigger it with relatively less effort than I recall.

There is of course the possibility that this is all in my head, and the alignment is doing as should be expected. I guess I'll find out whether I can deal with this at the next autocross event. Needless to say, I have lost confidence in this shop (this isn't the first time I've had issues with them). I even suspect the alignment values they reported might even be wrong because sitting in the car while printing off the final result, I see the front left, right camber on the screen set to -1.7, -1.1 . I have one year left in my alignment contract with them, but screw it; I'll pay a reputable place to fix their mess and do the alignment properly next time (possibly as soon as after this autocross event).

 

If the control arm bushing got ruined in the process that will give you a weird feeling.

Or as I have seen happen many times as I am an alignment tech, its possible that the bolt is not turning in the sleeve. What happens is that the cam bolts will rotate the sleeve and force the rubber bushing into a negative/positive pre-load condition. Depending on which way it was rotated. If so that will act like a wound up spring always trying to retract. It could make the suspension feel like it is overreacting to maneuvers.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to try to visually inspect these sometime this week. Is it obvious to tell whether they are bad? Is there a good method to test whether or not they are bad?

Reading around, my understanding would be to jack up the lower control arm with the car lifted on jack stands and pry at the bushings to see if there is any give. I'm not sure if this would necessarily apply in the case of possibly seized bolts / bushings, though.

 

Its very difficult to tell about the seized sleeve without actually loosening the lock nut and putting a wrench on the cam bolt. < With that method the way to tell is that when you put pressure on the cam bolt to turn, it will spring back to its original position that it started in.