Wheel Alignment
Reasons to have your vehicles wheel alignment checked
Are :-
- To keep you and your family safe
- To stop premature tyre wear
- To improve your cars handling
- To improve your cars braking
- To will save you money on fuel consumption
Why not ask yourself a few simple questions.
- Are your tyres wearing out too soon?
- Does your car squeal when going round corners?
- Have you hit a kerb or been involved in an accident?
Vehicles may suffer from uneven tyre wear, ‘feathering’ at the edge of the tyres, steering pull, tyre squeal or uneven braking – if so, then we’re able to help. At Team Valley Land Rover we specialise in diagnosing steering and handling faults caused by faulty wheel alignment.
Wheel alignment can be put out of measurement with small amounts of wear coupled with the bumps and knocks of every day. Because this happens so gradually you may not notice the effect straight away. What you may notice is that your tyres will not wear evenly or your vehicle may be unstable under braking or cornering. It makes good sense getting your wheel alignment checked periodically.
We are a friendly team at Team Valley Land Rover and will do everything we can to help and advise you in the best course of action for you and your car.
For precise suspension you need precise technology.
Front and rear suspension geometry and design ratings are decisive for safe road behaviour and ride quality. Car manufacturers develop better and more perfect suspension systems all the time. New materials and technologies are used including the air suspension systems used on Land Rover and Range Rovers. To correctly align these vehicles, you need the correct equipment.
To maintain their suspension design standards, vehicle manufacturers impose severe demands on servicing technology. They specify tight tolerances- for instance 2 minutes (a fraction of a millimetre) for individual toe, specific measuring routines, high precision and high repeat accuracy. Conventional axle measuring equipment just doesn’t meet these requirements. The wide variety of standard alloy wheels is another wheel alignment challenge.
The combination of our highly trained, skilful staff with top quality Beissbarth ML 8 R Tech digital 4-wheel-alignment equipment used in conjunction with the Land Rover IDS diagnostic computers and a wheel alignment ramp calibrated to 2mm are a powerful force in accurate wheel alignment – it takes in excess of £35,000 of equipment to properly and accurately wheel align any Land Rover or Range Rover with air suspension.
Accurate four wheel alignment explained
Wheel alignment is not a simple process – it is more complicated than making sure your wheels point in the right direction. Wheel alignment involves not only toe (how parallel your wheels are) but also camber (how vertical your wheels are) and a multitude of other measurements. It gets more complicated with the ride height of all air suspension vehicles needing to be locked at a specific height (using IDS) and by the fact that every angle affects each other.
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What is Toe? Toe plays a huge part in how your vehicle steers and how long your tyres last. Because of this toe is the most commonly checked alignment measurement, commonly called the tracking. If your car veers to one side when accelerating or braking then the chances are that something is affecting your toe adjustment. The picture on the left shows a plan view of a car with its front wheels pointing in, this is called ‘toe in’. If the wheels were pointing out….it would be ‘toe out’. |
Beissbarth Wheel Aligners
Team Valley Land Rover believes that, with the most manufacturer approvals, their Beissbarth ML 8 R Tech equipment is the best available. “Beissbarth has a long history with wheel alignment. Their equipment is properly engineered, highly accurate and well tested. They understand the science of car dynamics.”
“The Beissbarth equipment consists of four self calibrating pods that attach to each wheel, each pod takes eight separate measurements per wheel, talks to each other and then talks to the central computer giving graphical data printouts showing factory settings compared to actual.”
Beissbarth holds the highest number of top manufacturer approvals, says the Beissbarth UK managing director, Philip Hodges. He added: “The Beissbarth logo is a byword for advanced technology. “When you use Beissbarth you can be absolutely confident that your supplier has invested in the finest quality technology, backed by a high value customer service package that includes industry standard training and reliable service delivered by competent engineers.”
The ML 8 R TECH wheel aligner covers every vehicle from Smart to Large Vans. The precise run out compensation with shaft encoder ensures that measurement results are completely accurate. Each sensor has two CCD infrared cameras to produce 360degree measurement field around the car, providing pinpoint accuracy. Measurements are transferred by wireless from the vehicle to the mobile PC. Results are displayed in seconds on the monitor allowing our technicians to make real time adjustments. The ML TECH database comes with more than 20,000 data measurements from more than 65 vehicle manufacturers.
Our Wheel Aligner the ML 8 R TECH
Our professional Wheel Alignment System meets the needs of 65 leading car manufacturer service workshops. Original car manufacturer’s measurement routines includes Beissbarth target data.
- New sensor head with new technology.
- Live display of measurement values
- Solid aluminium frame reduces distortion of measurement.
- New 20° digital CCD Cameras with extended toe measuring range and integrated. camber pendulum. This allows caster to be measured with mechanical turntables at 20° up to 6,5 m (18 m optional) wheelbase.
- Charging the batteries via the sensor stub axles.
- High modulus connectivity and measurement ensuring a greater degree of accuracy in measurement
- 8 sensor system with permanent calibration monitoring system.
- 2 x 20° digital CCD-Cameras with own measurement processor per sensor head.
- Data transfer from cabinet to sensor head via radio.
- 20° digital CCD camera system with high accuracy and repeatability.
- 8 sensor system with additional measurements for accident damaged vehicles.
Even Race Teams Use the ML 8 R Tech
Team Valley Land Rover is in good company when it comes to using accurate, top performing technology to align the wheels of customers Land Rovers and Range Rovers. Top race team RML Chevrolet's preparations for the 2008 World Touring Car Championships (WTCC) are in full swing as they target more glory in 2008 and aim to add to their tally of 15 titles over the last ten years.
The team are gearing up for their challenge for WTCC glory following their best ever season last year. RML will also compete at Le Mans itself and in the Le Mans Series - the scene of their most recent success in 2007. RML have chosen Beissbarth's ML 8 R Tech Wheel Aligner as one of their most important pieces of technology according to Mark Busfield, RML Chevrolet Project Manager, who said:
"The Beissbarth ML Easy 8 wheel aligner is one of the most important pieces of technology we have available to us as a race team, we have three, one factory-based, the others travel with us to events. "We would be literally lost without them, as they are used after every single piece of on-track activity that we do, and provide an incomparable method for tyre alignment that is hugely more advanced than previously existing methods. They are easy to use, and most importantly, saves us a great deal of time."
