Four Wheel Alignment

What is Four Wheel Alignment?

Four wheel alignment, believe it or not, is a process to ensure all four wheels are correctly aligned. You may have heard of it being called wheel tracking before, but both are the same. It’s pretty easy to get your head around – if your tyres aren’t working in tandem together then you’re going to get unevenly worn tyres.

The benefits of perfectly aligned wheels include straight-line stability, improved cornering performance, improved fuel efficiency and steering wheel returnability. It can also improve the life expectancy of your tyres up to 12,000 miles.

How to Know if You Need a Four Wheel Alignment Service?

There are a few telltale signs that you can look out for.

Unevenly worn tyres. You may notice the outside tread is worn more than the inside
Shaky steering
Steering pulling to one side

Common causes:

Hitting a kerb or speeding over a pothole can be enough to knock your wheel alignment off. It may not be noticeable right away, but many knocks and bumps will eventually take their toll. Damage to your suspension elements can also affect your alignment so if you are having work done on your suspension, it’s worth adding this service on too.

Realistically, you should be having a wheel alignment check done every 6 months or 6,000 miles. It only takes around an hour to do, and we have comfortable waiting spaces for you to relax in while the job is done.

How Does Four Wheel Alignment Work?

This is to ensure the direction and angle of each wheel is matching what the car manufacturer has recommended. There are two different settings to check – the toe and camber.

Toe relates to the space between the front and the back of each tyre. Most cars have the wheels ever so slightly turned in, around 0.05°. This allows the wheels to turn as efficiently as possible without the tyres dragging on the road. Toe-in means that the front of the tyres are closer to each other than the rear of the same tyres. Toe-out means that the rear of each tyre is closer to each other than the front.

Camber is about the angle your tyres are sitting at and it measures the degree of tyre tilt. A positive camber is when the top of the wheel leans out from the centre. A negative camber is the opposite so when the wheel is leaning into the centre. Usually, you can expect to see a camber of 0.5 – 2°.

How Do We Do Four Wheel Alignment?

First, check all the tyre pressures and correctly set
Place alignment sensors on each wheel
Computer system measures all alignment angles
The computer then shows us what adjustments need to be made as per the manufacturer’s specifications

Four Wheel Alignment on BMW at CCM Gatwick

How Much Does Wheel Alignment Cost?

There are many garages out there that will do the test for free, but then charge per alignment. Meaning that you are leaving your vehicle with them without any sort of estimate on how much you will be charged.

That’s not something we do. We make it clear from the off. Our wheel alignment service is £80 + VAT and includes all adjustments. Our front tracking is less at £40 + VAT. Easy peasy.

Give us a call to book in an appraisal, or complete an online enquiry and we will get back to you as soon as we possibly can.

CALL OR EMAIL NOW - 01293 871430

We can perform four-wheel alignment on all makes and models. Whether you drive a Skoda, BMW or campervan, we are able to get the job done for you.

It doesn’t matter to us whether you have extensive damage that needs urgent repair, or if you just want us to check over your wheel alignment. This is a routine job for us so you can rest assured that we know exactly what we are doing.

CCM has been running for close to 30 years now, so jobs like this really are routine to us. Our dedicated teams can get your wheel alignment done and dusted within an hour. Leaving you to enjoy the rest of your day worry-free. All adjustments are included in the price of our wheel alignment checks too, so there won’t be any surprises!

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Four Wheel Alignment

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