The final step after buying new tyres is usually a wheel alignment. This ensures the money you just spent on tyres is spent wisely, and your new tyres won’t wear prematurely due to an alignment issue, causing scrubbing and pulling to one side.
The ultimate solution is a fully computerised on-the-spot laser alignment kit from Corghi. This wheel alignment equipment calibrates all four wheels, diagnosing any tyre wear issues and allows our technician to adjust your wheels with the correct manufacturers recommended toe-in and toe-out settings. Using this method, we can also identify any issues such as abnormal camber and castor settings compared to factory. This is the best way to identify early wear in your suspension bushes and steering rack.
To carry out a Mobile Wheel Alignment, our technician will roll Your vehicle onto slip plates to allow the steering free movement, and will then attach clamps and lasers to Your wheels. The lasers will talk with the laptop computer and show what adjustments need to be made to return Your vehicle to factory specification. The only difference between a Mobile Wheel Alignment and a shop is that we make our adjustments on the ground, instead of a hoist.
Wheel Alignment (Tracking)
On many vans, cars and even some 4x4's, each wheel is adjustable in terms of 'toe' angle. The best way to describe 'toe' angle is to imagine looking at your car from above. If you draw a straight line down the centre of your car (front to back) and each wheel followed that line perfectly, the vehicle would have 'neutral' or 'zero toe'. If the inner front edges of the wheels were facing towards the middle of the car, the car would have 'toe' in or 'positive toe'. Just imagine your car pidgeon toed. Where the inner front edges of the wheels and tyres are facing away from each other, the vehicle would have 'toe out' or 'negative toe'. As you can imagine, if your tyres are not within a range set by the manufacturer, your tyres will wear out very
fast due to scrubbing as you drive along.
All vehicles on the road today leave the factory with a specific toe angle - some are neutral, some have positive or negative toe in or out. Once that setting is lost due to worn steering parts, or having taken a hit here and there, irregular tyre wear will start to occur.
There are very few companies that will offer wheel alignment in your driveway. This is not because the process is too difficult, it’s just because other companies have not invested in the right equipment, nor done the correct training for this to be done safely and efficiently.
To save us time on wheel alignments, we have purchased the very latest HAWEKA wheel clamps. These allow us to perform an “AS DRIVEN” wheel alignment on your car, on the ground, just as you drive it. For further info on why this is so vitally important, please read the detailed outline by HAWEKA themselves here.
This explains that companies such as Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen etc...now demand an “As Driven” wheel alignment as they identify this as the only correct way to align your wheels. Don’t have your wheels aligned any other way in future, as every old style wheel alignment using skid plates under the wheels does not accurately align your steering as most new cars have independent suspension which changes the angle of your steering as soon as you jack the vehicle up.
The only restriction we have in relation to a mobile wheel alignment is needing a reasonably flat surface to carry out the procedure. If rain happens and we do not have sufficient overhead protection for our sensitive computer laser equipment, we may have to reschedule an alignment during another day (at no extra cost to you).
