Trust the seat of your pants

[dredgeguy]

I have been going through issues with my car not feeling planted. Have 114,000 miles on her. I recently had the steering rack rebuilt by Turn One, last fall Phil put in all new SuperPro bushings as well as new wheel bearings and tie rod ends. Phil told me to wait 2 weeks so everything settles and then get a 4 wheel alignment. Had the alignment done at a reputable shop and still did not feel planted. Now starting to doubt myself....is it just in my head.....am I expecting too much from a 32 year old car? Maybe I am just used to my daily driver Volvo S60-R that handles like it is on rails? The only thing left would be tires. I have Michelin Pilot Sport 2's and two have a late 2017 date code and 2 have a 2019 date code. Car is garaged and plenty of meat on the tires. Before I buy the new Michelin Pilot Sport 4's, I took the car to Heritage Chev in Owings Mills, MD. I had been at a Corvette car show at that dealership last fall and met the Corvette Service Consultant Stephanie Spindler and the 30 Year Corvette Master Sean Lewis. Had a great talk with them at the show and Sean told me he used to work on the ZR-1's back in the day and to let him know if I needed any help that Wazoo could not do. I called and made an appointment and Sean took the car out for a drive. On the first sweeping curve I hear Sean say "WHOH"! Something is wrong for sure. We go back to the shop and he starts checking all the suspension components and zeros in on the trailing arms, said sometimes they lock up but all checked out good. He said let's check the alignment.....the rest is history. 4 wheels pointing in 4 different directions. He said go get some lunch, give me an hour and a half and I am going to get you fixed up. All I can say is now the car feels like new and handles the way a Corvette should. The lesson to this story is trust the seat of your pants, if it does not feel right, it is not right! Don't know what happened with the previous alignment, guy had a bad day, machine calibration was messed up...who knows but glad to pay the $330 for an hour of diagnostic plus 4 wheel alignment rather than $1400 for new tires.