WORKING -- Dan Marsey

-- Alex Coolman

HE IS

An artist of alignment.

IT’S ALL IN THE HANDS

As a kid, Dan Marsey liked to take apart bicycles, radios, and anything

else that had mechanical parts. When he grew up, he went to Golden West

College, studied general automotive maintenance and now works as an

alignment technician at Glenn’s Alignment and Brake Service in Costa

Mesa.

But Marsey says he’s long been interested in welding and machine shop

work in addition to the very technical work he does at Glenn’s.

“A lot of the guys who do this are trained in that kind of stuff,” Marsey

said. “They just like working with their hands.”

NEARLY ZERO TOLERANCE

The age of tinkering around on cars with a socket wrench and a little

curiosity is over.

“Alignments have come a long way from the days of the bubble gauge and

the tape measure,” Marsey said.

In his job, Marsey uses a computerized laser alignment system to adjust

the wheels of cars to tolerances of within 1/128th of an inch. He tweaks

the toe-in and camber on sports cars in micro-increments that are

meticulously documented on a digital readout.

Marsey says he tells his amateur mechanic friends to abandon ideas of

duplicating this kind of high-tech work in their home garages.

“Nowadays, you can do a lot more harm than good to cars if you do things

improperly,” he said. “Your average guy nowadays can’t really do much

anymore.”

THE ZEN OF ALIGNMENT

Marsey discussed tire wear with the owner of a Porsche on a recent

afternoon. The owner had Pirelli tires on his car, and was worried about

the wear the tires were showing.

Marsey adjusted the alignment of the car until it was as good as he could

make it -- until it was fantastically good, in other words.

But even so, he warned the Porsche owner that the Pirellis would wear out

quickly.

“They’re high-performance tires,” he explained philosophically. They were

made to drive hard and wear out quickly.

And not even perfect alignment can change that.

EASY ON THE GREASE

Marsey, 37, has been working at Glenn’s for more than 18 years, all the

while watching automotive technology growing steadily more complex. He

operates the most sensitive and expensive alignment equipment in the

shop, while other older equipment is used for jobs that don’t need to be

quite so precise.

Alignment is a nice gig, Marsey thinks, because for all the hands-on

nature of the job, it’s actually less grimy and greasy work than other

mechanical work.

“It’s one of the cleaner aspects of working on a car,” he said. “You

don’t get too dirty.”