Hi all.
First post and I have a problem, which I'm sure is very common on here so I hope it isn't in breach of any rules / etiquette!
I'm having a bit of a nightmare with a car I bought in January. It's a very late 2005 E91 330D SE Touring and had a number of (mainly engine) problems when I bought it, all of which (except this non-engine related problem) have now been dealt with. Here's the story.....
The car had 17" wheels with run flat tyres that had been worn in the centre on the rear due to over inflation. I asked the garage (PMW - excellent bunch of people in my opinion) to swap the fronts for the rears and this somehow caused the steering wheel to be off (I didn't realise the tyres were worn funny until I swapped the wheels later). I asked them to do a 4 wheel alignment, which centred the steering wheel nicely and I felt the difference that so many people talk about in handling. Here are the printouts:
Then I bought some second hand 18" wheels with fairly worn (4mm ish) and slightly too large for the car (225/45/18 instead of 225/40/18 and 245/45/18 instead of 255/35/18) tyres and the steering wheel was very slightly off to the left when going straight. I picked up a slow puncture a couple of days later so I took the car to a local tyre shop with a Hunter machine (nameless for now) to get the puncture repaired. Whilst I was there I asked them to check the geo as the steering wheel was slightly off. Here's what they came back with:
They said that the rear left toe was on the limit and that the tyres had worn a bit funky during their life, which might explain the slight steering wheel misalignment. I decided not to have them adjust anything as I planned to put new tyres on and carried on using it, although I don't do very many miles at all. Sure enough, during a 250 mile journey to Bristol and back last week, the steering wheel seemed to sort itself out and I was happy.
I had also ordered some brand new Goodyear Eagle F1 AS2 from Oponeo and they arrived Monday just gone. I didn't know what the coloured lines on the tyres meant at the time (do now) but I think I remember them being very similar. I checked the DOT code and all of them were made between the 11th and 17th week this year. 11th for the rears and 17th for the fronts.
Full of excitement at the prospect of having new tyres, I trundle off to nameless tyre shop and get them fitted. Whilst I'm there, I asked them to do another Hunter alignment check as I thought it would be a good idea to sort out that pesky rear left toe now that I have shiny new tyres. This is what they came back with:
I was pretty surprised. The same machine (I think - they have two) that it had been on just 4 weeks earlier now said that I needed £96 worth of adjustments. They were also having their machines calibrated that day - not sure if that's important or not. I figured that these are new (and fairly expensive) tyres with no funky wear and it's probably a good time to get the adjustment done, so I went ahead.Here's the result of their work:
Within a few miles of leaving the nameless tyre shop, I noticed that the steering wheel was off to the left and felt really, really disappointed. I had a work meeting so couldn't turn back and resolved that I would visit them the next day with the complaint that they hadn't centred the steering wheel properly when taking adjustments.
So I went back the next day and explained what I thought might have happened. They offered to put the car back on the machine and see what they could find. Apparently they also tried swapping the front wheels over (staggered so can't swap back to front) and took it for a test drive (they agreed it's off to the left). They tried some more adjustments and here's the result:
The steering wheel is still turned left the same amount and they've said they would check it again once the tyres have "bedded in". I'm not 100% sure I buy that, but my girlfriend is taking the car on a 600 mile round trip this weekend so I guess there will be plenty of bedding in going on. There's no time to do anything but let her take it now as she's off at 9am tomorrow.
So I guess my questions are:
- What's going on?
- Is their machine screwed?
- Is the car screwed and only likes funky worn tyres?
- Are the tyres going to suffer any funky wear over 600 miles or so?
- If I take it somewhere else and they get completely different measurements, can I expect a refund from nameless tyre shop?
- Is it possible that another place would find different measurements?
