Alignment shops in Orange County, Ca

[65malibuguy]

Hi all, I am installing all new front and rear suspension from UMI soon on my 65 Chevelle. New uppers, lowers, coil overs, sway bar, wheels and tires, rear springs and shocks. I'm a bit nervous about who I take the car to as I usually do everything myself. I usually did the string around the wheel and measure method which has served me fine over the years but now I think it needs to be done right to get the full potential from the new parts. Does anyone know and trust a shop in the orange county area to do the full alignment to an aggressive street alignment? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[ryan@jcg]

Hey! I know it's a bit out of the way, but if you cant find anything in Orange County, we may be able to help you out.

[79-TA]

Lee and Son in Fullerton get a lot of customers with classic cars. They're at least used to the different suspensions that are more typical on older cars.

If you can get the alignment fairly close by yourself so that the car is drive-able, the trip out to JCG could be fun.

[65malibuguy]

I'll have to check them out. Oxnard is a little far but nothing AAA couldn't help me out with.

[ryan@jcg]

if youre up for it, shoot me an e-mail at the address in my signature. I'd be happy to show you around the shop if you can make the trip!

[Chad-1stGen]

I have used Dave's Frame and Alignment twice and plan to use them again on Mustang I recently purchased. They are located in Huntington Beach.

I learned of them from a few different friends. While he certainly does his share of plain vanilla cars, 50% of the cars I ever see in his shop are a mix of higher end performance cars and all out race cars.

The guy that actually does the work is Dale and he's been doing it for 30 years. His rates are also pretty reasonable for custom alignments on aftermarket suspensions.

EDIT: A good and bad thing is that they don't do appointments. However, since they are close I always just drop my car off first thing in the morning and pick it up the following day. So for me it works out great as I'm able to get an alignment quickly when I need it.

[79 Camaro]

I can't recommend an alignment shop in CA but I struggle to understand how tuff it can be to align a GM product. Unless you have a really custom set up its just a matter of shims in the front. When I was much younger I worked a Chevrolet dealership. For whatever reason I became the alignment guy. GM's and Ford cars were a piece of cake if all the tie rods, bushing and ball joints were good. Mopars sucked due to the offset cam bolts excentrics used to adjust the caster and camber. Being MN cars they were always rusted solid.

Last week I had my 68 C10 aligned. Tube a-arms in front and trailing arms in the rear. In the rear I measured the wheels to the frame to center the rear end before I brought to the alignment shop. When they did the alignment I was off by less than a 1/32". Took them about an hour to do the alignment. Of course everything was new in the front end rear end.

As I understand today they use the front end to get the center line of the car and everything is based off that. Back in the 80's we used mirrors and bubble levels. No four wheel alignment.

[65 drop top]

House of suspension in Lake Forest is where I go

[65malibuguy]

Thank you for all the suggestions. I wish I had all the tools to do the alignment myself but I dont. I also want to get the car balanced, I dont have scales to do that. I kn ow of a guy in torance, west end alignment, that does all balancing and alignments on everything up to track only cars so ill look into him.

[Keith]

Glen's Break and Alignment in Costa Mesa

[65malibuguy]

Glen's Break and Alignment in Costa Mesa
I called this shop today, seemed like a knowledgable perso , unfortunately he said they’d are in the process of moving and won’t be operational until early November. Heading over to accurate alignment in Costa Mesa today. Talked to joe, he also sounded like he knew what he was talking about.