Well this whole alignment thing certainly didnt go according to plan. I went to sussex autocare for my appointment and despite me having the printed confirmation they said they did not have time to do the alignment. They said they would call me if they had an opening. I never heard back from them.
I then booked an alignment with SMS here in guildford. When i showed up this morning they asked if i wanted tires with my alignment. I told them no, i only booked for an alignment. I was then told today is a tire day and if bought tires they would do the alignment but if i didnt buy tires they werent doing solo alignments and to come back another time. They seemed shocked when i turned around and left.
Next, out of desperation, i went to bellfields autocare which isnt very high on my approval list due to how they have treated my wife in the past. Desperate people do desperate things i guess. Anyway when i asked if they could do an alignment to the mini they said there equipment isnt suited to do a mini properly. Apparently its a size thing. I didnt pay much attention to the explaination as i was already thinking about my next stop. Bellfields did recommend guildford tyre as a place to get a proper alignment done for a mini so i went there. Nice bunch of people and were more them happy to take my car in immediately. One of the employees knows minis very well and he took my car for a quick spin before putting it on the machine. When he came back he said the back end felt really wrong so he lifted it quickly and my offside radius arm had a ton of play in it. He said its not worth aligning until its fixed. He went over everything else pretty quickly and told me all was fine. I went to pay and they said no charge which was unexpected. I will be going back for sure.
Now i gotta figure out how to change out the radius arm. Pretty sure exchanging for a rebuilt one with minispares is my best bet. Hopefully i can get the old one out without issue.
Edited by kit352, 13 July 2019 - 05:47 PM.