What is wheel alignment?

Wheel alignment is a check we can carry out to ensure your vehicle’s wheels are set to the optimum position, as per the car manufacturer’s specifications. Our alignment assessment involves checking the toe in/out, camber and castor angles of all four wheels. Wheel alignment that is out of specification can cause uneven and rapid tyre wear, it can accelerate wear to suspension components and can also ultimately effect the handling and road holding of a vehicle. Misaligned wheels can also have a detrimental effect on your fuel economy, due to a much greater rolling resistance on the road surface making it harder for your vehicle to move along in a straight line this is not only bad for your fuel bills but also impacts on our environment and causes unnecessary pollution. We will always recommend having a four wheel alignment check following steering/suspension repairs or after new tyres are fitted. This is to ensure not only that your vehicle is driving straight but to also get the longest life possible from your tyres.

Symptoms of out of specification wheel alignment are:

  • Uneven tyre wear
  • Steering wheel not centred
  • Steering pulling/drifting to left or right
  • Audible tyre distress when turning or cornering

Here at Fallsbrook Motors we have invested in the latest camera alignment technology, supplied to us by our partners Absolute Alignment camera. This cutting-edge Bluetooth enabled equipment helps us to identify alignment inaccuracies and this allows us to make quick and accurate adjustments to your vehicles alignment which is accurate to within 0.1 of a mm. Our highly skilled technicians can normally check, diagnose and adjust your vehicles wheel alignment within a 1 hour booked time slot.

Please note that seized alignment adjusting bolts can take longer than an hour to free off and can incur extra labour costs, if this is the case it will be advised to you on the day.

An example of wheel alignment that is out of adjustment:

example of wheel out of adjustment

Our wheel alignment process

STEP 1 – Pre-Check
This is common to all alignments, it’s important that care is taken to ensure there are no obvious problems with the vehicle that could cause an inaccurate reading. The checks include:

  • A short road test
  • Play/wear in suspension components
  • Visible damage to wheels/suspension components
  • Tyre pressures
wheel alignment process image

STEP 2 – Prepare Vehicle For Adjustment

  • Drive vehicle onto front turn plates
  • Select vehicle alignment data from database
  • Attach 3-point Pro Wheel Clamps. These clamps avoid metal to metal contact ensuring no damage to your rims
  • Attach alignment cameras to wheels
  • Following the on-screen instructions, remove the locking pins from the turnplates and perform 10-degree caster swing from left to right
  • This gives us our “diagnosis assessment” readings
  • Start engine whilst steering wheel is straight– starting the engine is vital to balance the fluid in the power steering system ready for the next stage
  • Switch off engine and lock steering wheel in straight ahead position
  • Raise vehicle to working height
  • Continue up to adjustment height

STEP 3 – Adjustment

  • Adjust until all figures are correct and within the manufacturer tolerance. This will show green on both the live adjustment screen and the full colour print out
  • Rear axle first – camber then toe as available to adjust
  • Front axle second – caster, camber then toe
  • Refreeze readings
  • Drop vehicle to floor and remove measuring heads and clamps
  • Print report and hand to customer

An example of our wheel alignment report

Click to view before and after Wheel Alignment reports.

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