Hey guys, the girlfriend just purchased an 04 Pearl White TL with Grey Interior. It has 150,000 miles, 1 Owner, full service records, always serviced at Acura and all maintenance minders completed.

I noticed that on the service records an alignment was completed about every year if not more often. And once again it needs an alignment that I am getting done tomorrow. I've owned a lot of different cars and have never had to perform an alignment that often. My first question would be if alignment is an issue with these? I suppose with the mileage and it's age, they were putting about 25,000 on it a year, but it still seems a little overdone. Is an alignment recommended by Acura every 20,000 or 15,000 miles?

Anyways, thanks for the info ahead of time, I'm sure I'll get some great info from this forum in general!

Thanks, Adrian

 

Adrian! Tell your girlfriend congrats on the new ride!

Between getting new tires, tire rotations, and any brake work done every 25k miles, I'm sure there was an alignment done every time. If the owner was averaging 25k a year, I'm sure they didn't want to prematurely wear out the tires, therefore they had it aligned quite often.

Find yourself a local Firestone shop and purchase the lifetime alignment for ~$150 instead of paying $50 each time it needs one.

 

Alignments should be done once a year or every 15,000 miles, unless you notice the tires wearing funny or any pulling. I just moved from a town that did no maintenance to their roads and last year I did 4 alignments and only put about 9000 miles on my car. And on the plus side, doing the regular rotation of the tires and alignments will help the tires last longer. I have 30,000 miles on my Continental Conti extreme contacts and they are still at 7/32 of tread left.

 

I would but honestly I know a lot of people in the automotive world and I have the "hook-up" with a lot of shops in town, one guy I know who has been doing it for 50 years and does it perfect every time, and he charges me a case of beer to do it!!!!!

Apparently these last owners decided not to get an alignment the last time they got new tires, the ones on there now are nearly brand new, but the front's are cupped and noisy as heck!
Any suggestions for the best, most cost effective tire out there. (It just has the stock 17's on the base model)

Thanks for the info guys!

 

first off ... congratz on the new car ... if ur looking for an all round good tire i suggest continental extreme dws

 

I vote for the General Exclaim UHP for best bang for the buck

 

Pics of gf or she doesn't exist

 

Anddddd welcome to Acurazine.

 

congrats man...yo cant go wrong with a wdp tl....and welcome

 

Adrian, I'm glad to see you're in our area. I go to Jay Wolfe Acura on 103rd and State Line. They're a good dealership, honest and good to deal with.

Feel free to PM me if I can help you with anything.

 

lol x2

 

Thanks Steven, That's funny, guess where I bought the car, Jay Wolfe Acura! haha. I know quite a few people there, including the used car manager and internet sales manager, who I used to work with in Lawrence so I got to just take the car "as is" to get a better deal. The car was bought there, then serviced at a dealership in Oklahoma, then when they needed a new one last week they came up and got it from Jay Wolfe.

I figured out the alignment issue. The front passenger strut is leaking, therefore causing cupping on that passenger side, not sure if the previous owners just decided to decline that maintenance or if they didn't catch it, supposedly a common problem.

So I'm getting that fixed from a guy I work with at Honda, hopefully for just some cash.

Anyways thanks for the comments guys! Hankook Ventus V4 ES H105 is what I decided on, they are $400 to the door (with the $40 rebate).

Here you go picky people, pulled this one off google images.....hehe

 

Alignment is not a maintenence item. If the roads are halfway ok, it should only have to be done every few years at most. I used to have it done when I got new tires but since it's hard to get a good alignment, once I have one I don't touch it again.

Most likely you have torn compliance bushings or worn suspension items. The previous owner probably did all of those alignments because they didn't know any better.

 

Ya like I said, front passenger strut is done for. I haven't ever heard of needing an alignment that often ever. I'm in the same boat as you.

I wouldn't say it was the previous owners fault, most people don't know, but i cant believe an Acura dealer didn't catch it after the years and years of alignments

 

Well I am getting my struts put on by a friend at the Honda dealership I work at for $100, then getting an alignment tomorrow, then the new tires should be here Wednesday so I'll be doing that that night. Then the next night I'm going to replace the front pads, they are at about 2mm.

I'll post some pictures once I get done with all this stuff, she should be good to go for another 100K after this.