by The Roadie » Tue Aug 13, 2013 6:26 pm
Typically they do the camber and caster first, because those involve loosening the lower control arm bolts. Once those are in spec, THEN the toe-in and steering wheel centering is the last thing done. I've never heard of anybody running out of thread length on the outer tie rod end.
It *can* be an iterative process, since all three adjustments interact and it may have been taking a lot longer than he anticipated. But that's no excuse for an ethical shop to short-cut the process and give up. We can't tell for sure if he was lying about the thread length, but personally, I've never once heard about this and I read a LOT of posts (like almost 100% of them).
That said, can you post the after-adjustment measurement sheet or the numbers? Caster is the least important of all the items, because its biggest usefulness is to self-center the tires after a turn. It won't cause excess tire wear like the other two things.