Well today, I came out of a car park in my MK2 Punto and accidentally went the wrong way towards the exit meaning I attempted to maneouvere the car into the exit lane, which ended up involving me hitting a pretty high curb - the front nearside wheel. Then I had to reverse back and the rear left wheel took a bit of a bashing on the curb

Inspected, the front nearside wheel seemed ok, but the rear left wheel seemed to have a scratch.

Is it possible for me to check the wheel alignment is okay or do I have to take it to a garage? The curb was pretty high, too!

garage job really, a check is normally free only charge to adjust

I see, is it just something Halfords can do quickly or do I have to take it to a Fiat service centre?
Would it fail its MOT for it? I have a service/MOT coming up in a couple of months so I could ask them to sort it then...

How much does it cost to fix usually?

tyre fitters normally

I paid £25 last time i needed my cars tracking adjusting.

A quick test you can do is on a flat, straight road doing 20-20 mph let go of the wheel and see if it pulls to one side. It will normally pull slightly to the curb due to the camber of the road but only slightly.

Best to get it checked and fixed, else you will wear down your tyres excesssively and need them changed too.

A word of warnign when going into a tyre place to have it checked, make sure they put the machine that shines the laser beam to check it. maybe its just the garages i took my car too but they all insisted it was right when i asked them to check the tracking. The last garage i took it to i told them i wouldnt leave until they put it on the machine and check it, and guess what it was out by loads!

Mdeko said:

I paid £25 last time i needed my cars tracking adjusting.

A quick test you can do is on a flat, straight road doing 20-20 mph let go of the wheel and see if it pulls to one side. It will normally pull slightly to the curb due to the camber of the road but only slightly.

Best to get it checked and fixed, else you will wear down your tyres excesssively and need them changed too.

A word of warnign when going into a tyre place to have it checked, make sure they put the machine that shines the laser beam to check it. maybe its just the garages i took my car too but they all insisted it was right when i asked them to check the tracking. The last garage i took it to i told them i wouldnt leave until they put it on the machine and check it, and guess what it was out by loads!

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Thanks for the advice, I will try that on my way to work tommorow!

I tried it, the car slightly veered to the left of the road, but I dunno if that's because the road is a tad bumpy as either side of the road is sort of on a slant (there's hedgerows and fields either side), but the steering wheel turned at a slight degree angle toward the left, but as you say the camber of the road could cause that.
I did try to use the flat parts of the road where possible, and being a relatively quiet route anyway, it was safe for me to slow down with having no cars in my mirror.

Where did you take yours? I don't have a local Fiat garage and, although I take it to my nearest (20-30 odd miles away) for its MOT and Service, I don't want to go all the way over to Warwick just to have the tracking fixed, I would preferably take it to Kwik Fit or somewhere - I'm presuming it's only a 5-10 minute job?

never go to Kwik Fit

dave said:

never go to Kwik Fit

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Why's that?!
The previous owner had some jobs done at KwikFit, looking at the log book.

Only places round here are Hi-Q (bunch of arrogant people work there), KwikFit and Halfords and one or two independant places, so it's either those or go to Grays in Warwick, which is a bit "out of my way" just for wheel tracking!
Where would you recommend?

Mind you, that said, there's also a receipt from my local Renault garage which replaced the rear right hand side light casing. Maybe Renault could do it?

ring all the independent places, and ask what sort of alignment method they use, when one says laser then book it in there.
when you get there there should be a machine that looks a bit like this


and will give you a printout

Okay, that's great, thanks for your help, I'll ring round on Monday!
Can't afford to lose my tyres and end up paying for replacement tyres as well as wheel tracking repair!