Chicken Duck
Member Since: 11 Nov 2009
Location: Italy
Posts: 1387
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Ok hope i can get some advice from this great forum. My disco done only17000 miles. Had to have 4 wheel alignment done on the 24/9 of this year due to fns tyre wearing bald on outside edge.I went with the main stealer after reading about it on here. They charged me 200 for allignment and said i needed 2 tyres which were another 300.My car was in the same place last week for service and mot (MOT subbed out to local garage) its Stratstones in Bury.Car passed but mot had advice note with it that steering arms had slight play in em. Now heres my two questions.1 should Stratstones have picked up slight play in steering arms when they did 4 wheel alignment? Will the slight wear affect my tyres? Any advice would be much appreciated.
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 11th Nov 2009 12:46 pm |
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Chicken Duck
Member Since: 11 Nov 2009
Location: Italy
Posts: 1387
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sorry am desperate for a reply. Bump 
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| 5th Dec 2009 6:53 pm |
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Barry C-All
Member Since: 13 Nov 2008
Location: Essex
Posts: 169
  
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Hi there Disco Duck
When the tracking is set the wheels are pointed in the prescribed direction, usually to within 1 degree of the manufacturer's specification. I am not sure what it is on a Disco3 but it's probably something like 1 degree tow-in (front of the front wheels are fractionally closer together than the back of the wheel, at the wheel centre height).
All the steering arms and linkage conspire to ensure the wheels are pointing accurately in the right direction and any play or slackness could easily cancel out the degree of accuracy required.
IMHO the short answer is, yes, no point in doing the tracking when there is wear and slackness in the joints and I would have thought that the garage should have checked the condition of the steering prior to doing the tracking.
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| 5th Dec 2009 7:37 pm |
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gshim
Member Since: 19 Dec 2008
Location: Wigan
Posts: 19
 
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Hi Disco Duck
200 notes for 4 wheel alignment is a bit eye watering.
just had mine done at Ninemeister in Warrington they're a nightmare to find tucked away behind the karting by Bank Quay station.
found them on alignmycar website
Quoted around £90-100 but cost me £65 in the end depends what they have to do
friendly bunch and you get to have a good nosey at what they're doing.
The specialty is setting up racing Porsches and did a considerably better job than than my Stealer's done on his last 2 attempts.
Mine suffered from very strange handling more than excessive tyre wear and has had all sorts of arms bushes etc fitted each supposedly accompanied by a 4 wheel align.
Despite this when it went on the rig at Ninemeister the front castor was different on the front wheels by nearly 2 degs which explains a lot of the problems I've been having.
Apparently according to the Porsche guys there's such a wide tolerance in the settings allowed by the manufactures all the stealers do is get the displays to show green but this could still leave everything pointing in assorted directions to some degree.
even if you get the play sorted under warranty I think it'd be worth a bit of cash just to know it's actually set up properly made the world of difference on mine especially on long motorway journeys where it was always very vague in the high speed stability stakes
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| 12th Dec 2009 6:22 pm |
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discoboy
Member Since: 30 Jan 2009
Location: UK
Posts: 155
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It appears to me that the main stealers charge £200 for the alignment regardless of what needs doing and how long they spend on it (no more than 2 hours). I got Micheldever to do mine which cost approx £100 becuase there were only 3 adjustment that needed doing!
It's also fair to say that the alignment should be the last job after getting any suspension parts sorted.
I think I would be onto the stealer to try and persuade them that they should redo the alignment for free following suspension work given that they should have picked up on it in the first place.
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| 12th Dec 2009 7:59 pm |
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Chicken Duck
Member Since: 11 Nov 2009
Location: Italy
Posts: 1387
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Thanks Fellas  This forum is great your all such a friendly bunch 
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| 28th Dec 2009 9:59 pm |
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