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The garage near my house wants £72 and the one near my work wants £68 just to run diagnostics on my Clio. They say they charge an hours work as they aim to find and then fix the fault in that time. As I'm pretty certain I will need to order parts I don't want their hours labour, I want the 5...

I know, I have one, but it doesn't read ABS codes.

What will actually read these codes? Do I need to go to a Renault specialist with a clip, or will other readers do it? If Renault, how much are they going to charge?

Winter tyres: real men run semi slicks.

A mate of mine runs them on his MX5. Same story really, go easy on standing water and no provoking the rear and you will be fine.

Pretty much as you would expect a track tyre with big tread blocks to perform. They dont like standing water, all year round, not just winter. When it gets cold they are fine for normal driving so long as you take care. The are by no means lethal, but a half decent normal tyre will easily out...

Nobody? :(

Garages want £30+ to tell me my cars broke. I know its broke, the ABS light comes on randomly, I just want to know what's broke to see what needs fixing. Does anyone near Dorking or Luton fancy reading my ABS code for a more reasonable price?

I moved out of Southampton, otherwise you would have had my business Mike. Would have been worth the trip down to you in hindsight :(

£84 an hour. £70 is ex VAT!

Just worked out that had I accepted their charge for the loan car, the 'doubling' of the cost of parts, and the full hour for camber before I pointed out he said it was 45 minutes, the total cost all in for 2 new tie rods would have been.... £621!

Interestingly, I have managed to magically gain some camber. I've just got the Eibach bolts, yet they have set it to just over 2 degrees either side, which is well above the 1-1.5 usually seen with the Eibachs. Although do lower springs introduce a bit of camber too?

Yeah £70 an hour ex VAT. Yep, an independent place.

I certainly have. Alignment was £60, plus another £64 for 3/4 an hour for Camber adjustment. From what they told me that was 3/4 of an hour to adjust 1 of the camber bolts.

Deal!

I know! Lol. This experience has solidified my findings that all garages with Hunter alignment machines are manned by utter monkies. The 3 places I have used have all been terrible.

They have also 'absorbed' a doubling in the parts cost when they ordered the correct parts, aparently. And that is cheaper than the original price they tried to charge when I kicked off. Basically, they are saying changing tie rods is a £500 job!

£352 in total! £124 alone for wheel alignment with camber after quoting £60! Station View Garage in Dorking. Avoid. And if I can establish the Renault dealer they use for parts, avoid them too.

Believe me if I could have taken my car from them and got it done else where I would have.

I got 3 quotes, all were over £200 for tie rods. Then 60 for alignment with camber. Garage phoned back, car won't be finished until tomorrow, FFS.

My quote was £299 for all the work plus wheel alignment including camber. It was the more expensive quote I got, but was the only place with a Hunter. Garage just called, he "didn't have the full details infront of him" to be able to tell me how much its cost, lol. Trying to pull a fast one I...

Yep. From what I've found online there is zero reason why the cost should differ from their estimate. Same amount of labor, same price for the parts. Unless they want to charge rent on the lift my cars been sat on for 4 days :p

I've not seen the bill they want to charge yet...

Like I said, the 'Renault Specialist' sticker on their window and on their website has been pulled into question. Hind sight is a wonderful thing.

I had that exact conversation with them, but they seemed oblivious to the 172 having 2 steering rack options. They didn't know, Renault never told them, they just asked for parts and they turned up. Makes me fairly certain they won't have any idea about having to cut down the rods either. The...

That fault lies with Renault. They gave Renault the car details, Renault shipped out the wrong parts.

They are different threads between the SMI and TRW rack. There is no additional labour, and the SMI and TRW rods are similarly priced from what I can tell. So the estimated price shouldn't change. The only way they could try is to realise they need track rod ends too after throwing mine away...

Just find a way to loose 2kg and get it under a tonne for internet cool points. :D

Speed/Lazyness. They said that as they were just going to throw it in the bin anyway they just cut the tie rod in the middle, rather than bothering to try and remove the tie rod end. TBH I can see their thinking, and there wouldn't be any issue had they got the right parts to replace it with. I...

Could be an interesting conversation later today then... Can a Hunter alignment machine printout be easily transfered electronically so they can email it to me?