I have had my mini since April of this year - sure it isn't new - but it is new to me! Can someone please help me find somewhere near Milledgeville Georgia to have my four wheel alignment done - the closest place I have been able to find is located 132 miles from my home! I see these little pretties everywhere but am unable to find locally where they are being taken for necessary maintenance . I have four new tires and am running around on metal threads because I desperately need an alignment before driving my new tires into the same shape the old ones are in. Thanks bunches in advance for any advice anyone may have!

 

What is the build date of your MINI? It's found on the drivers door jam. How many miles? What's the old tire wear look like?

There is no camber adjustment on the front, only Toe
There is no camber adjustment on the rear if the MINI was built before Jan 2005 and only limited after that.

 

Most good tire shops have alignment equipment and can do a 4 wheel alignment. Look in the yellow pages and call around. Is your car lowered? If so, that will cause the inside of the rear tires to wear quicker. Is it your front tires that are wearing in the inside or outside? If so it could just be the front toe which is easy for most alignment shops to correct. The rear toe is time consuming to adjust but can be done. There is no caster adjustment. AutoXCooper defined the available camber adjustments.

 

Just some additional info from my sister who shopped around for an alignment recently and discovered that not all tire shops can do an alignment on the MINI:

"I also asked the tire shop to do an alignment, but when they tried to do it, they realized that they couldn't because MINI requires a 150-lb weight to be placed in the driver seat and front passenger seat, another weight in the trunk (can't remember how heavy), and a full tank of gas. They didn't have any weights so they couldn't do it. They also mentioned that there were a LOT of adjustments to make -- more than other cars. So I guess that's why MINI charges so much. Just FYI, for future reference..."

 

It was just a lazy or lame shop. The MINI is no harder to align then most other cars. The Computer does call for weights but not really needed. However if the driver is over 200 pounds I'd be sure and be in the drivers seat for the alignment because that much weight on just one side of the car will impact the alignment. Any shop that is not willing to take a few mins and review the details and try to do the job doesn't deserve your biz. Keep Looking.

 

I had mine aligned at Sears because they were the only ones around that would align to my specs, and not factory specs. In your case, a regular alignment is all you need, and any Sears with an auto department should be able to do it for you. They only charged me $99. Good Luck. Smart move to align BEFORE the new sneakers go on.

 

Seems odd that they would turn down a job. So, yes, maybe they were lame (they didn't know how to do it)---seems odd too though. At least they said they couldn't do it rather than doing an incorrect job, no?

 

I just had new tires put on and got an alignment at the same time.
All they adjusted was the "toe" and "steer ahead" in front. I paid 99.00. They told me becuse it was a BMW it was more than a "normal" alignment. They gave me a printout of what adjustments they made. I have no idea what it all means

Im just stock. I did just get rid of those hard noisy runflats

 

If you scan and post a printout of the alignment sheet we can probably tell you what they adjusted and a little bit about the adjustments. I do not know what they mean by "steer-ahead". Probably just made a toe adjustment.

Sounds like you paid for a 4-wheel alignment but only got 2-wheel alignment.

 

Thanks quikmni. That would be really helpful to me. Not only do I want to understand more about my car but if I have to go back to the guy and ask for some money back I will. He wasnt real happy that I ordered my tires from Tirerack and saved 30.00 per tire from what he was going to charge me

If its helpful, I have 205/50R16's on the stock S-lites

 

From your alignment printout, it looks like they only adjusted the front toe because it was the only adjustable aspect that was out of spec. The other adjustment that they could have made was rear toe but it is a pain to adjust, so since it was in spec they were not required to adjust and left it alone. The front camber, front caster, and rear camber are not adjustable on your car.

Camber is the adjustment for the tilt of the wheel. When looking from the front or rear of the car camber is how the top of the wheel/tire tilts into or away from the car. Look at the little drawing next to the camber numbers on the printout. That is a drawing looking at the car from the front. The drawing is showing positive camber (top of tire tilting away from car). Your car has negative camber (negative measurement) which means the top of the tire is tilting towards the car. Negative camber is good for better handling. If you look at the rear of your car you will probably be able to see the -1.9 of negative camber at the right rear tire (passenger side). The top of the rear tire tilts towards the car. Without adding aftermarket adjustable parts there is not much you can do about the camber.

I see that your right rear tire has -1.9 degrees of camber which is quite a bit. While good for better handling around turns, the negative camber will tend to wear the inside edge of the tire because with that tilt the car rides on that inside edge a little more. Just make sure to have your tires rotated frequently. Wherever you purchased your tires,they might do free tire rotations. I do not know what tires you have (hard or soft) but a tire rotation about every 5,000 miles would be good. If you find that the inside edge of your right rear tire tends to wear too fast you have a couple options.
1) reduce the amount of rear toe-in to closer to zero so the tire does not scrub so much (because it is pointed in). The rear toe spec range is very large (-0.3 to +0.7) and a good shop will adjust the toe to what you want as part of a 4-wheel alignment that you paid for. You could even discuss the amount of rear camber with the alignment shop and tell them that someone suggested less toe with that much camber to reduce tire wear and see if they agree.
2) you can add adjustable rear lower control arms so that the alingment shop can adjust the camber. However, they are about $200-$300.

Caster is how the wheel tilts forward or backwards, compared to the suspension, when looking at the wheel from the side of the car. The amount of caster is designed into the car and is not adjustable without aftermarket parts. Positive caster improves straight line tracking.

Toe is how the wheel/tire points in or out when looking down on the car from above. Like looking at your feet. The drawing next to the toe measurements, shows a toe-in condition, because the front of the tires are pointing in compared to rear of the tires (like walking pigeon toe). A positive measurement is toe-in and a negative measurement is toe-out. Most vehicle manufactures spec a little toe-in because the toe can change as the vehicle lifts a little at highway speeds, so a little toe-in at rest should mean about zero toe at highway speed. However, toe will cause tire wear because it makes the tire scrub across the ground because the tire is not pointing straight. What surprises me with the adjustment made is that they took the out of spec right side 0.09 and adjusted to almost out of spec the other way. They should have easily been able to adjust to right in the middle of the spec (spec is 0.11 to 0.19 with 0.15 being in the middle). The final 0.18 is almost out of spec so the alignment was not much help. They did adjust the left side from 0.20 (out of spec) to 0.13 (almost in the middle) which is OK. As state below, maybe the unusual toe adjustment was to correct the steer ahead because they did not adjust the rear toe. It would have been better for tire wear (especially if a lot of lower speed driving) to properly adjust the front and rear toe.

Total toe is the summation of the left and rear toe. In your case the current total toe was 0.31 (0.13 + 0.18). You actually ended up with more toe-in then you started with, which I do not think is good. Not a real problem but excessive toe causes tire wear and I like it set closer to zero (I actually set for a little toe-out for better handling).

I am not exactly sure what they mean by "Steer Ahead". I suspect it is how well the steering wheel is pointed when going straight. i.e., Is the steering wheel straight when going straight? The Toe adjustment will change the steering wheel angle if they adjust one side more than the other. You can see that your steer ahead went from +0.05 to -0.02. It should be as close to zero as possible. I suspect that could be a reason they adjusted your right front toe so much (and almost made it out of spec) was to get the Steer Ahead in spec.

Thrust angle is the direction the rear wheels are pointing in relation to the center line of the car. The thrust angle should be zero. Yours is close at 0.05. To get closer to zero, the alignment shop would need to adjust the rear toe and then adjust the front toe. That is probably another reason the Steer Ahead was a little off because they tried to compensate by only adjusting the front toe which is not the best process because now you have even more toe-in at the front. They should have adjusted the rear toe and then the front toe to nominal measurements which would have probably resulted in the steer ahead and thrust angle ending up very near zero.

All in all you did not really get what you paid for but everything is in spec so I am not sure you can complain too much. The rear toe is a pain to adjust and many shops will not adjust the rear toe. The shop that did my last alignment said it took over two hours to do the alignment because the rear toe took so long so they lost money on the $99 4-wheel alignment. However, your shop made money on your alignment.

 

First I want to thank you for taking the time to look at this and explain in detail what it all means. I truly appreciate it. I now have a clearer understanding of what an alignment entails and what this shop did and didn't do. Some of it may have been out of their ability but surely they know that they didn't make any great improvements and as you pointed out may cause me more wear in the end.
I am planning on stopping back in there next week to have them check the torque on my lug-nuts . I am going to ask to speak to the technician that did the alignment and ask him a few questions
If he is unable to make the few suggested adjustments I am going to ask for lifetime tire rotations included in that 99.00 I paid. Seems fair to me.
Im also going to start looking around for someone who can work on a MINI and knows what they are doing

Thanks again quikmni!!
Cyndi

 

You are welcome. Good luck. I hope everything works out fine.

 

Quikmni, that's one of the best explanations of camber, caster and toe I've seen. Nicely done!