i went to get mine done today at a Mvis Discount tire center and they said that the MINI is too new and that it's not in the computers. now i have to go spend $100 at the dealership to get my alignment done!
anyone in ny/nj/ct area know of a shop that will do it for me, correctly. i'm in White Plains, NY.

 

Why are you trying to get the alignment done?

The MINI really doesn't have all that much alignment adjustability anyway (no camber adjustment for instance).

 

I brought mine to a Town Fair Tire in Norwalk, CT, and they told me that MINIs couldn't be aligned. So I brought it to the dealer (BMW Darien), and they told me it would cost $190 JUST to put it on the machine... no labor to fix the problem included.

So I asked Alex at Tire Rack and he steered me to a place in Old Greenwich, they're going to do it for $99 (plus I'm going to have new "shoes" put on).

 

i hit a pothole and my alignment is out of whack now (steering wheel is not centered any longer, pulls a little to the right too). let me know how it goes storer. was the $190 price quoted from Westchester MINI?

 

sorry...my bad, Darien

 

I had my alignment done after I got my mini lowered with Eibach springs. However, the shop could only correct the toe-in/out for the front wheels and cannot make adjustment to the rear wheels, as they said they don't have the right tools to correct the camber.

 

For most MINIs you do not need to do alignment if everything seems to be working OK even after adding:
1. Rear swaybar
2. Lowering springs
3. Rear contol arms
4. end links
5. New rims and tires even if different size.

If you have adjustable lower rear control arms they will help make setting rear camber much more easily which helps an alignment shop. In the rear there are a total of four control arms.

I took my MINI to a specialty alignment shop and they had all of the specs for the 2003 MINI and had no trouble setting everything to factory specs and doing my rear camber to my liking. I had just added H-sport adjustable rear control arms and springs to my Madness rear swarbar. My negative camber before alignment was -2.4 degrees while I asked for it to be set at -0.75 degrees after alignment, all other settings were to factory specs.

Cost was $80 for about 90 to 100 minutes of work and the ride quality was much much better after alignment. Very smooth, handled great and tracked straight.

 

i plan to drop my mini with some h-sport springs real soon. i got a set of camber plates for the rear, which i plan to have the shop install at the same time as the springs. is that good enuff to fix the alignment? i plan to take it to an good alignment shop right after.

or do i need to get control arms? from what i understand, camber plates allow you to just fix camber. control arms can adjust both camber and toe.

is that right?

so, in other words, if i install some springs, which throws off the alignment (not sure if both toe and camber), will camber plates allow me to correct the alignment back to stock settings?

 

>>I brought mine to a Town Fair Tire in Norwalk, CT, and they told me that MINIs couldn't be aligned. So I brought it to the dealer (BMW Darien), and they told me it would cost $190 JUST to put it on the machine... no labor to fix the problem included.

I didn't know Town Fair Tire offers alignment service. It looks like all they do is balacing and mounting tires. They do have good price though.

I wonder how much MINI of Fairfield County would charge?