Front end shaking.

Car shaking while driving at speed. Seemed obvious alignment problem. Had alignment done. Received car back WITH NO COMMENT. I drove car and shaking still there. Took car back to tire/alignment shop. Now they tell me it’s the shocks. Something they probably should have noticed and told me already. But I know a little something about cars and it didn’t seem right to me; the car clearly passed the bounce up-and-down test. So I took the car to Expert Auto Care (EAC) being reviewed here. They put the car up on the rack, and within minutes came back to me to show me rattling tie-rod and bad ball joint…OBVIOUS, they were so bad. On the opposite side they showed me an adjustment nut was rust-locked into place and rounded-off. It obviously didn’t happen within the last week, when I had the alignment done, because of the corrosion. You would think the alignment shop would have noticed and told me that too. And how the heck could they do an alignment with either of those problems??? Also, they showed the tire shop we got the tires from (not aligned so), used a single 6oz weight for balancing. EAC said maximum single weight to use, according to state regulations, was 2oz. This is something else you’d think would be noticed by the alignment shop. All in all, EAC ball parked a couple of thousand dollars to service a $2000 car, and suggested it might be better to buy a new/newer car, and we should go home and think about this. Which was very good of them. (Not that I wasn’t going to do that anyway). On the shop wall there is cost of service, and the 20-25min diagnosis should have run between $60-$95, but EAC charged me nothing $0. Which was very very kind of them. I can highly recommend EAC for, at least, diagnosis service honesty. And, based on EAC’s diagnosis (which they showed me) I cannot recommend “Wheel Works of Mt. View” for suspension work.