Jim Warman Posted September 5, 2010 Share Posted September 5, 2010 OK... so we are speccing a new rack. The "short list" is the Hunter WA131 - being as it is the cheapest deal in the latest Rotunda Catalog. I don't want to see us buy a white elephant. The machine will replace a Bear PACE100. The sun is going to be a big factor... the alignment bay and the "alternate" bay are in line (nose to nose) with each other and are juxtaposed east-west. Morning and afternoon sun might affect infrared cameras. Add that I see a LOT of 20 inch passenger type wheels as well as 19.5s on 450/550 trucks. The Bear requires that I install and remove adapters for the 20 inch wheels and the adapters don't play well with dually type wheels. Add again that some wheel tire combos (mostly "rim saver" tires and rims with no bead rail) make it impossible to install cameras properly or securely. Another consideration... The late model Fusion, the Taurus SHO and some off breed marques have a deep front valance... this can block the cross beam on poorly or inadequately designed front cameras. At the same time, you don't want a machine that will take a half day to set up.... Nor do I like the idea of wireless, battery operated cameras. The question(s)... what does your shop use? What are it's strong points? What are it's weak points? If only life were simple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OHNO60 Posted September 7, 2010 Share Posted September 7, 2010 Were using Beeline here Jim. Works on everything from passenger to tractor trailer with same adapters. Cold bend axles with 100k pistons like their made at antie annes pretzels. No weak points in over 15 years with beeline. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Posted September 7, 2010 Share Posted September 7, 2010 We have a John Beam (Bean?) Machine from Snap on. It uses IR cameras, which is a no-no for your shop, but it's proved itself pretty good at our shop. Easy setup. Easy to use. I RARELY do alignments and find myself not having a terrible time on our machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Mutter Posted September 7, 2010 Share Posted September 7, 2010 We have the r811 hunter machine,very nice to work with. I like the tragets, you just have keep the traget area clean so the camera will pick it up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OHNO60 Posted September 8, 2010 Share Posted September 8, 2010 Beeline uses lazers for toe and believe mercury type switches for caster aqnd camber. Guys think its pretty user friendly. Never been down in 15 years we had the system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Warman Posted September 13, 2010 Author Share Posted September 13, 2010 Just so everyone knows, the decision has been made. We are getting the John Bean Prism through NAPA rather than Snappy. You can just smell a product review coming - right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Warman Posted September 25, 2010 Author Share Posted September 25, 2010 OK... so the new machine is here and set up - all we're waiting for is the rep to come by and calibrate it and show us the basics.... Something noteworthy (other than the operating system is Vista) is that the machine has no disc drives for removable media (no CD/DVD drive, no floppy drive) - instead, the alignment program comes on sticks... cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Warman Posted October 4, 2010 Author Share Posted October 4, 2010 The guy that showed up to demonstrate the aligner featured English as a second language. Cool Adam was supposed to train on the machine too.... Not in this life... more cool. For your listening pleasure.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam_Dodson Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Adam was supposed to train on the machine too.... Not in this life... more cool. i wanted too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Warman Posted October 5, 2010 Author Share Posted October 5, 2010 We'll get you there sooner or later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
batmantech Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 we have a john bean pro 32 visuliner Will you check out if your shows camber caster splits in pos or neg. Ours does not and they keep saying that they will be changing that soon. We have found many illistrations of adjustments to be wrong or inacurate but if you have some experience it wont be a problem.Let me know if you find other interesting differences. Our old unit was a hunter h1111 which was a great unit untill hunter would not support it any longer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Warman Posted October 10, 2010 Author Share Posted October 10, 2010 Our old machine was a Bear Pace100... Differences? Ohhhh, yeah. I've done a half dozen alignments and the more I use it the more I like it. Since the Edge is labelled a 'crossover', it get's lumped in with trucks in the specs. That threw me for a bit. Speaking of specs - Some readings appear to turn "red" before they should. Today a 2010 Exploder had a left side caster reading of 3.75 which is right on the low edge of the window. This flagged the reading as bad and, looking at one of the screens I'm not used to yet, it looks like it would have flagged it all the way to 3.85. Meanwhile, I recall that the low edge of the window was declared properly at 3.75 deg. Other than that, I love that you can work around the front of the car without having the cameras in the way (the front wheels get targets). And the youngster in the next bay had a problem with the flashing LEDs on the old Bear. The best part... the Bear would often leave me with a steering wheel off center meaning an extra trip up the hoist to get clear vision. This machine has had me bang on with the steering wheel every time. There is a feature called "EZ Toe". For rear steer cars you can turn the wheel and access the tie rods without raising the hoist... this is NOT as convenient as it sounds. There are at least a couple of different printouts you can use to make it easy for an SA (with a little coaching) to explain to a customer what we did and why. The wheel clamps fit up to 24 inch and, while I haven't yet encountered any of the really gnarly rim saver type tire/wheel combos, I haven't had any real problems getting a solid mount for camera or target. If your store is looking at a new aligner that won't bend the budget real bad... this is definitely worth a peek. These things list out at about $20G CAD... SnapOn sells them as does Rotunda but we picked ours up through our local NAPA store (you know - the guys with the shitty PSD oil filters)for under $17G. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
batmantech Posted October 11, 2010 Share Posted October 11, 2010 One thing that is confusing to me is that they list caster then camber then toe on the display screen. After 20 years of alinging and seeing camber first it was difficult to look at the screen that way. I agree the white indicator and the color green or red dont always look correct. You have to go by the numbers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Warman Posted October 12, 2010 Author Share Posted October 12, 2010 One thing I think is really great (??????). You can do an alignment 300 feet away from the console - but I think it might make it a little tough to see the numbers without the remote display. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.