My 3 series has 100K miles and tires seem to be wearing evenly. I'll need tires in about 10K miles. Is it wise to get a wheel alignment, and if so do you recommend I take it to the BMW dealer, or is a non-beemer shop (e.g.Firestone) OK?
IMO if it's wearing the tires nicely, tracks straight down the road, and handles well, leave it alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. (Except for the cooling system of course!)
you should at least have it checked. it doesnt hurt to check it. definatly take it to a dealer mainly because the manufactors want to add a certain amount of wieght to the front seats back seats and trunk. the dealer is the only one that does that.
It doesn't hurt to check except for the cost which can be $50 to $150. If you have no problems leave it. Wait until you start replacing worn suspension parts for the re-alignment.
Hate to disagree with you "BornMostWanted". There are Dealer Technicians and then there are Dealer Technicians. The one time I did take my 528 to the closest dealer (80 miles one way) for alignment, it was obvious that it had not been weighted per specification AND the front toe had been misadjusted so badly that the steering wheel was cocked left at least 20 degrees when driving straight down the road. That little exercise required ANOTHER appointment and ANOTHER 160 mile round trip to correct. So I bought the required 500 pounds of weight in WATER SOFTENER SALT, took it to a local two stall non-BMW independent who would LISTEN TO ME, told them EXACTLY what I wanted done, and stood there IN THE BAY while they did it. (To heck with "the insurance" excuse. That was over 4 years ago, the tires are wearing quite evenly, and the car tracks very nicely. BTW, during the pre-alignment checks, the local tech found that the vaunted "Dealer Alignment" was totally out to lunch.
I had only one (1) wheel alignment after approx. 140,000 miles on my 2002 model E46 sedan...and that was just a precautionary alignment because I could not tell if tire wear was solely because of the worn (and leaking) rear shocks. I let my local BMW dealer do the alignment.
