"In the beginning, all wheels had that nice lip where clamps attached," Pellegrino said.  The new designs "created an extreme challenge to properly install alignment clamps, and in some cases made it impossible."

Pellegrino said that his experience early in his career building custom suspensions for high performance and custom vehicles at Distaso Automotive & Marine in Los Angeles, Calif., had taught him to think outside the box and come up with custom solutions.  His 40 years of automotive experience, primarily in undercar specialty businesses, gave him the understanding of alignments necessary to come up with a new solution.

 
The volume of work at Pellegrino's shop, California Tire Co., allowed him plenty of opportunity to identify the problems and test possible solutions.  The six-bay shop has two office employees and five shop employees.  Tires sales represent about 65 percent of the shop's volume, he said, with repairs of brakes, shocks, and suspension accounting for the other 35 percent.  He said California Tire completes about 10 alignments a day on average, about 20 percent of which are for other nearby shops.

"I believe that if you are going to sell a tire, you should also do everything you can to make that tire last the longest and to serve the customer," Pellegrino said.

Because the shop has a reputation for quality and being able to handle difficult or precise alignments, Pellegrino said he became concerned when he felt they weren't able to offer consistent alignments with some tire and wheel packages.

"When it really hit home, I was aligning a Corvette to racing specs and it took 45 minutes to set the heads and align it to the specs they wanted. But I knew in the back of my mind that it was OK at best," he said.

The problem, Pellegrino said, is that many new tire and wheel packages leave no room to mount traditional clamps so that even if you can get them to stay on, they often produce an inaccurate alignment. And, moving them around to fit can damage the wheel.

"At first, I asked every equipment guy that I knew what they had to solve the problem," Pellegrino said.  "They always suggested new clamps but they didn't really solve anything."  With no solution in sight, he said he set out to come up with his own.

"I wanted to get off the wheel because the designs of the wheel were going to keep changing," Pellegrino said.  "I wanted to get to the hub.  When you align a car, the only thing that you are doing is setting the angle of the hub, so I wanted to get back to the hub.  The closer you are to the source, the more accurate you are." 

What Pellegrino came up with is a CNC machined 6061/T6 aluminum plate attached to by replacing three lug nuts with mounting adapters and then bolting on the plate.  "Now we have a highly machined plate that we can consistently attach any brand of alignment head to," he said.

Because the plate mounts to the hub through the studs, Pellegrino said the accuracy of the alignments is improved, there is no chance of scratching or gouging an expensive custom wheel, and it doesn't matter what style or size of wheel is being used.  "The tool provides you with a consistent clamping area so your clamping won't vary," he said.

"The brilliance of this tool is how simple it is," Pellegrino said.  "A lot of people try to read too much into it but the first time they see it set up they realize how simple it is to use and how it can solve so many problems for them."

The kit, which comes with eight sets of steel adapters to replace the lug nuts during the alignment and attach the machined aluminum plate to, retails for $1,695, Pellegrino said, with an optional carrying case offered for $145 or a custom cart for $350. 

 
Pellegrino said Tru Align sells the product directly in some areas but prefers to refer customers to local distributors such as Myers Tire Supply and Mohawk Distributing.  The tool has been approved by a number of tire vendors, he said, including Goodyear, Tire Kingdom, and Tire Pros, is an approved tool for Honda dealers, and is under consideration by a number of other tire retailers and car manufacturers.

Pellegrino said that most shops that purchase the kit choose to charge between $40 and $60 extra for vehicles that need the tool.  "We explain to the customer that because of the type of tire and/or wheel they have, we need to charge them extra to use this special tool but that it will ensure a proper alignment and protect their custom wheels."

 
Pellegrino said the adapter is needed for about 15 to 20 percent of the vehicles that now come into his shop but that number is increasing. "The OEs are changing the wheels they are using and there are always new designs being offered in the aftermarket."

"Most of the shops that we've heard from have recovered their cost in two to four months," Pellegrino said. 

 
"This is a specialty tool that will return the cost of your investment but the most important thing to me is that it allows you to do the best alignment possible and it takes away the liability involved in scratching a wheel," he said.  "How much more can a tool do for a company than increase your profits, decrease your liability, and improve the quality of your work?"