Tracking

degrees. It's the difference between which way the wheels should be pointing and the way they *are* pointing. Or (hopefully) *were* pointing before they fixed it.

How much is worth fixing depends on lots of things.. if it's too far out the tires will wear on the edges pretty quickly. If you have expensive tyres then losing half their life can add up very quickly.

It can also affect the handling - what's not understeering into a hedge worth to you?

But, crucially, the actual value and the amount of slop to make a noticeable difference varies by the car.

My Astra estate was always set to quite a bit off because I found it felt much nicer to drive with the tracking set to zero degrees than with whatever Vauxhall wanted. And it wore the tires less, too. Go figure.

I would like to say degrees & minutes or millimeters, but the equipment most garages use work with neither. What they read depends on the distance from your front to rear wheels, which is clearly different on every type of car.

The places that use the better gear will give you a printout that is actually in degrees & minutes or mm, but you'll be paying £60-80 for a four wheel align in that case. But, in this case you can compare the values against the manufacturers tolerances (look in the manufacturers workshop manual for your car) to see if they are out enough to need re-adjusting. The place I take my cars to have the tolerances on their computer, so you would know 'how far out' it was before they head towards it with a spanner.

To be honest unless you go for a proper 4-wheel alignment shop (and that excludes any tyre dealership I know of), you're wasting your money anyway.

Andy.

Most give the toe in in millimetres. Could also be degrees - but much more difficult to measure.