The mini's seem pretty simple to align. No real alignment adjustment on the rear suspension, the the only think you can adjust on the front of the car is toe....the camber and caster are not adjustable.

Are any of you guys saving the $60-$80 that shops will charge, and just doing the front alignment yourself? If so, what's the best and most accurate way to do it?

Thanks!

 

I've been doing my own alignments on my cars for about 1.5 years now. Probably have done 8-10 alignments on the mini while we were setting it up for auto-x. Every time we changed ride heights, spring rates, etc it needed a new alignment. I wasn't about to pay for $120 for a race shop to do an alignment each time.

Front camber is slightly adjustable by loosening the three front strut mount nuts and shifting the strut mount in/out in the holes. On the R56 cars there is a plastic "pin" you can pull to get more negative camber.

The rear is camber and toe adjustable so you have to consider that. Rear camber is done with an eccentric bolt on the lower control arm and toe is done by loosening the trailing arm mounting bolts. Adjusting rear toe is a pain.

I use strings and a caliper to set toe. You have to know the track width of your car and set up the strings parallel to the centerline of the car. If you just set the strings equal distance from your wheels your toe measurements will be off. You can just use toe plates but you can screw up your thrust angle that way.

I measure camber with a SmartCamber digital gauge. Makes camber measurements super easy. Definitely worth the money if you're going to do a bunch of your own alignments.

Don't forget you need to do your alignments on a level surface! Garages are not level! Get some linoleum tiles (1/8" thick) and use them under the wheels to level the car before you do the alignments.

 

Yes have many times

 

Been doing it on all my cars for about 20 years with inexpensive, simple equipment.

 

How often do you have to do an alignment? Unless you hit a curb, or otherwise bend something, nothing will change.
I have a Volvo with 225,000 miles, it has been professionally aligned twice, both times after an accident, for less than $100. The tires last about 50,000 miles.

Dave

 

With our VW's, I needed to align the front camber (and check the toe-in) when replacing struts
since they have an eccentric bolt on the struts and it's hard to put it back exactly as you found it,
and I would usually check alignment every year or two, but yeah, unless you bend or replace
or modify (i.e. lower) something in the suspension, it should stay put.

My MINI came from the factory with about 3/16 front toe-in (too much),
but after correcting that, nothing has changed significantly in over 10 years,
except it was hard to nail down a stable toe-in reading when I had worn
control arm bushings (it can wander back and forth due to the play in the worn
bushings, so if you measured it a few times, you sometimes got different results).