4 Wheel Laser Tracking

[Phil S]

Picked up my V6 Sport on Friday, absolutey amazing, spent most of yesterday polishing it and impressing my mates with the incredible value for money!

If any of you are in the Guildford Surrey area and need your tracking done, Guildford Tyres will do a four wheel laser alignment for £23 all in, which is pretty good I think...

Also got a quote for a pair of 215 45 17 Goodyear Eagle F1's, which came out at £115 inc valves and balancing - seems prety good to me as well...
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

[adam_shaw]

Both prices sound excellent.

My last trip to the tyre people (4 wheel laser track / camber etc adjustment and 4 Michelin Sport tyres) came out at more than 400 quid.

Surrey isn't so far, and the saving would be worth it.

A

[lorriman]

Phil

£115 for two F1's?

Or was that the price for each?

Had 4 wheel alignment done a couple of weeks ago and if cost me £20 and last December had 2 215/45/ZR17 F1 G3s supplied and fitted for £225 all from ProTyre in Gloucester. But a long way to drive from Guildford!

Looking into sourcing slightly higher profile tyres next time around. Maybe 215/50/17s to try and overcome the awful ride I get with the current wheels. The difference in rolling radius wouldn't make much difference to speedo readings, but I understand that this size tyre is unusual. They might protect the wheels a bit better from buckling.

I am told by the same people that they are available for the new Vectra, but no other car has them. That could turn out to be rather more than the £112 per tyre I got the F1s for.

[Phil S]

That was for per tyre, so seems to be an average price. If you are changing the tyre profile from 45 to 50 wouldn't that mean your speedo would be out by just under 10%?? :thinking: i.e. you could be doing 88mph with the dials showing 80......

[lorriman]

Phil

You are right, the higher profile will result in a lower speedo reading, but it's not as much as you quote.

Going from 215/45/17s to 215/50/17s would result in approx. 3.3% error, so would mean an under reading of just over 2mph at 70.

Rolling radius of 215/45/17s is approx. 1965mm
Rolling radius of 215/50/17s is approx. 2032mm

The difference is approx. 3.3%. Hence my calculation.

However, not sure what, if any trouble I could get into at MOT or if the police stopped me. I don't suppose anyone would really care at those figures. Just as long as I didn't push my luck by driving over 80 on the motorway! (82.6 mph).

You'd think some electronic wizzardry could be done with the sender for the speedo to recalibrate it to the new wheels wouldn't you?