[Cloudsurfer]

So, a little background: Last week I managed to hit some debris on the highway at night, which managed to scrape up and crack my GT3 bumper, chunk a wheel, and throw the alignment way out. I threw my other wheels on the car after, which were just road force balanced 100 miles ago.

So, I drop it off for an alignment yesterday. I also ask them to check my interior door handle microswitch, as the driver door stopped lowering from the inside a few weeks ago (works fine from the outside, and lowers properly when door is open or you activate the top). The service writer calls me a few hours later to tell me the alignment was quite off, but nothing is damaged. He also mentions that my driver door needs a new regulator. I ask why I'm feeling vibration at speed if nothing was bent or damaged, and he says "well you have a bent front wheel," to which I responded "those were just road force balanced and were true, I haven't even hit a bump in the car since, but can you give me the runout numbers on the damaged wheel?" He tells me that he "can't do that" but that you can "see that its bent by looking at it" (which would have to be a pretty sizable warp to be visually seen). So, I'm going to have the tire shop re-spin these on the Hunter this week.

I drive away from the dealer, and first thing I notice is my stereo sounds horrible (to those who don't know, my car has a pretty ridiculous audiophile system installed) and that my GPS nav head unit has been switched from "CD" to "FM" (which takes several executed keystrokes on the touchscreen, not like bumping a button by accident) and then on the drive home I notice the alignment is still off (and the steering wheel is off center) and that I still have vibration.

I call him first thing in the morning to explain these problems (I figured while they had the door apart to inspect the window system they didn't plug something back in right). He tells me that the tech didn't have the door apart at all, so he can't imagine what could have happened. I run the car over to an audio shop here, and we dig around this and that and it turns out someone swapped the left and right inputs on one of the power amps (which are located in the front trunk) and then all is well again.

So, this brings me to two things: First, as far as I can tell, they have no reason whatsoever to be playing in the front trunk while doing an alignment, maybe to access the strut tops from behind the front trunk, but not in the front trunk. Secondly, how exactly does one diagnose a window regulator without taking the door apart?

All in all, I'm considerably less than pleased by the experience, which I made very clear to the service writer today. We'll see how they want to handle this.

Patrick