How Do You Know if Your Vehicle Needs an Alignment? If you can only make it in once per year, schedule your alignment check for the spring, that way you’re ready for all of your summertime adventures. Two of the best times to have your alignment checked include early spring and fall. Getting your alignment checked twice a year should be another part of your car-care schedule. Getting those things done can add to the longevity of your vehicle and can save you money. Most of us wouldn’t miss an oil change or other routine maintenance. Get Your Alignment Checked Twice Per Year This helps you get the most life from those tires. We recommend an alignment after the installation of new tires. Plus, it can add unnecessary wear to your car or truck. This can waste fuel, cost you money, and cause safety concerns. It’s also the reason your vehicle might pull or wander to one side. Plus it can cause tires to wear out faster. When a car or truck is out of alignment, it can reduce your vehicle’s drivability and gas mileage. Tires being adjusted for fast/uneven tread wear on vehicles with poor alignment will not be warranted.Although it’s sometimes very subtle, the alignment of your wheels can get out of whack from everyday driving. Proper maintenance and alignment will not only increase tire life and driveability, it will also extend the life of suspension and steering components.īottom line = Check your vehicle for worn suspension/steering components before/when suspension height is altered and geometry changed after worn components replaced, if any needed, get it aligned. Even on low mileage vehicles, this is important, due to the possibility of low quality original equipment components.įinally, vehicles with oversize tires and wheels may need more frequent alignments, due to increased load on suspension and steering components. This may also mean replacing worn suspension/steering components such as ball joints, tie-rod ends, idler/pitman arm, control arm bushings and wheel/axle bearings. Only a competent alignment to suggested specs is sufficient. While a steering stabilizer is a good idea with the installation of any tire/wheel combination larger than OE, and may disguise the ‘feel’ (darting, hunting, wandering, wheel shimmy) that goes along with poor alignment, it will not fix this.Note: Brand name suspension manufacturers and vendors always recommend front-end alignment after lift or lowering kit installation or suspension height adjustments. Correct changes in front end alignment due to torsion bar or spring adjustment, lift or lowering kit installation, severe off road use, wheel width and/or offset or some combination of the above.Here is the way to avoid this unwarrantable problem: Most often, we can trace tires requested for adjustment due to “fast tread wear” back to a vehicle with poor or uncorrected front-end alignment. The same can be said of tires with a ‘chopped’ and/or ‘feathered’ look to the tread. When front-end alignment goes uncorrected, it shows up on the tread surface of tires which have excessive wear to the inside or outside portion of the tread. It is important to remember that when installing wider tires and/or wider wheels with more negative offset than factory and when ride height is changed, especially on late model IFS (Independent Front Suspension) equipped foreign & domestic P/U’s & SUV’s, it also changes alignment settings and load on the steering components.
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