Today, I got my tires aligned at Firestone and the tech told me that the caster was way off. When I looked at the specs of the work that they did, it was for a Civic and not an Accord. He thought that he gave me the wrong work sheet, but it was the right one. The guy that did the alignment thought my car was a Civic Si. I don't have the Civic Si rims or made it look like one. Although I did think about trading it for a Civic Si Sedan. Maybe the manual transmission threw him off. Not too many ppl get the manual Accord.

The car runs straight and fine, but do the 06 Accord and 06 Civic share the same camber, toe, angle, etc? I told him that the work that they did for my car was based on the wrong car. The tech insisted that the Civic and Accord are the same. Since I drove the car around and it feels fine, I didn't want to argue anymore. I also tried to look online for specs and searched this website to find any information to compare with what they did. My searches came up empty or maybe I looked in the wrong sections. The tech basically aligned my tires for a Civic and not an Accord. So, are the specs the same? I thought they had different suspension set ups and chassis. :dunno:

There isn't a castor adjustment to be made as far as I know. I have the specs for the HFP suspension, and I believe the only difference between that and the stock suspension is the rear camber. The rear camber for the stock suspension should be somewhere around -.5 to -1 or so. There isn't a lot of adjustment that they can make for this on stock equipment though. The front and rear toe should be 0 +/- 2mm which I would assume is about what the specs for the civic are. If it isn't right then take it back or you'll end up replacing tires much more quickly than you need to. Places that do alignments piss me off. The majority of them just seem like they have no idea what is going on in my experience and often are more concerned with trying to rush the job rather than doing it correctly. Kind of ridiculous that they didn't even know what kind of car they were working on.

The specs could be the same, but the suspension on the Accord is a double wishbone.(Upper and lower control arms) The Civic is a McPherson strut suspension. I would take it back explaining that difference and politely ask for a recheck just to be sure. My 2 cents.

The tech should be able to pull up the Accord spec and comare to the Civic spec.

Alignment isn't something you can always feel, my last car (an Integra) had the rear trailing arms replaced under warranty by the Acura dealership, I asked before the work if a 4-wheel alignment is going to be done, knowing full well my copy of the shop manual says it was required, and the dealership said yes, I asked them again as I picked up the car afterwards if 4-wheel alignment was done, the answer was yes it was.

The car drove just fine afterwards so I had no reason to doubt what I was told of the 4-wheel alignment.

Two months later as I was washing the car, I noticed frayed steel cords showing through the inside shoulder of both rear tires!

I went back to the dealership complaining, and the service manager pulled up the service paperwork for the rear trailing arm and said "Well, the 4-wheel alignment was not done" as if that was my fault.

With every ounce of control that I had, I told him quite sternly that "No $hit, the shop manual said it needs to be done, I asked before the work if it's going to be done and was told yes, and I asked again afterwards if it was done and was told yes, and now you are blaming ME for the tire wear because the 4-wheel alignmnet was NOT done?"

I have never seen a grown man back off as quickly and as quietly as this guy did, they are lucky that I didn't ask them to replace my two rear tires since those tires had very little tread left anyway and I was going to chuck them in a few weeks at the end of the season, but I still should have asked for the $100 I paid to get a pair of used tires put on from a local tire place to tie me over until I bought winter tires.

What was I thinking???!!!!

So the moral is to check and verify the spec, and get it in writing from the shop that they WILL owe you a set of tires if the tires wore unevently due to difference of alignment spec.

Thanks for the inputs all.

Wow, Aviography. Your story is making me worried. I'll go back to the Firestone shop tomorrow and ask them to print out the specs for an Accord to compare with what they did to my car. I had alignment done there before, but I didn't save the worksheet.

See Post #2 of this thread for the Accord alignment spec as listed in my Honda factory shop manual (for the V6):

http://www.driveaccord.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14397&highlight=camber