Hi all,
Had a great experience today with a guy that seems to be a bit of a genius when it comes to getting all four wheels pointing in the right direction. I had the car serviced last week at an independent BMW specialist near York - Atlas Automotive, also good guys who commented that I had some unusual tyre wear at the rear on the inside edge so suggested getting an alignment done (which they don't do so he wasn't trying to get more money from me). Having done quite a bit of research on various other forums, the same company in Leeds kept coming up as being great at this stuff. ABC Car Service is run by Artur, a Polish chap that seems obsessed with geometry on cars. I took it in this morning at 10am and some three hours later(having test driven twice) he was still not happy with the rear camber adjustment. He rang BMW to double check some of his measurements for which he uses a John Bean laser alignment system and they confirmed that even when they leave the factory the rear camber is not quite perfect but within spec but can be corrected by replacing the lower rear wishbones and some adjustable end bolts which he is doing next week. He even went to the trouble of trying to adjust the position of the rear subframe to get it in the right place as apparently it was about 2mm to far back. "It is better but not perfect"
The front was toeing in quite a bit which he corrected but he was not happy with that either as he showed me that even with the steering wheel locked in centre position he could moved the left wheel very slightly due to a worn tie-rod. To me the front end now feels brilliant, much less twitchy and a lot less tramliney (even better than when I replaced the run flats) but it's going back for the tie rod and the rear wishbones doing in a weeks time which should make it perfect all round.
For all this effort he charged me £45!!! This included a 50% discount due to me going back for the extra work later and another alignment but even if he had charged me the full £90 I would have been amazed.
I would recommend these guys to anybody in Yorkshire that feels like tightening up the handling, improving the tyre life and possibly fuel economy of their Z4. It would be worth a trip, Artur really knows his stuff.
http://www.abc-carservice.co.uk/
Had a great experience today with a guy that seems to be a bit of a genius when it comes to getting all four wheels pointing in the right direction. I had the car serviced last week at an independent BMW specialist near York - Atlas Automotive, also good guys who commented that I had some unusual tyre wear at the rear on the inside edge so suggested getting an alignment done (which they don't do so he wasn't trying to get more money from me). Having done quite a bit of research on various other forums, the same company in Leeds kept coming up as being great at this stuff. ABC Car Service is run by Artur, a Polish chap that seems obsessed with geometry on cars. I took it in this morning at 10am and some three hours later(having test driven twice) he was still not happy with the rear camber adjustment. He rang BMW to double check some of his measurements for which he uses a John Bean laser alignment system and they confirmed that even when they leave the factory the rear camber is not quite perfect but within spec but can be corrected by replacing the lower rear wishbones and some adjustable end bolts which he is doing next week. He even went to the trouble of trying to adjust the position of the rear subframe to get it in the right place as apparently it was about 2mm to far back. "It is better but not perfect"
The front was toeing in quite a bit which he corrected but he was not happy with that either as he showed me that even with the steering wheel locked in centre position he could moved the left wheel very slightly due to a worn tie-rod. To me the front end now feels brilliant, much less twitchy and a lot less tramliney (even better than when I replaced the run flats) but it's going back for the tie rod and the rear wishbones doing in a weeks time which should make it perfect all round.
For all this effort he charged me £45!!! This included a 50% discount due to me going back for the extra work later and another alignment but even if he had charged me the full £90 I would have been amazed.
I would recommend these guys to anybody in Yorkshire that feels like tightening up the handling, improving the tyre life and possibly fuel economy of their Z4. It would be worth a trip, Artur really knows his stuff.
http://www.abc-carservice.co.uk/
