Car Wheel Alignment
Like so many other places in the world, I have encountered that the city centre has the tendency to breed a whole generation of potholes. Many stories have been heard about cars loosing control in many of those potholes, ending up in the workshop. We swerve around them and pray that nothing is broken after hitting one of them.Let’s say, even though you didn’t break anything, there could still be some amount of damage to the vehicle. Hitting potholes, rubbing curbs or bumping concrete parking stops, eventually you’ll find that things are no longer straight anymore. You notice your car pulls to one side or the other, or it seems at times to be fighting with you when you want to turn or try to maintain a straight course. I’m sure most of us have experienced this, one time or the other.
The first sign of something wrong usually shows up on the front tyres. They seem to develop some peculiar ‘wear’ patterns that will severely shorten it’s life span. On a normal situation, these tyres with funny and peculiar patterns should have it’s alignment checked. The change may be so gradual that this is not noticed in the very early stages. Chances are your car needs a wheel alignment. You know your car needs an alignment every once in a while, you might even get one whenever you buy new set of tyres.
Keeping your wheels aligned will prevent tyre wear, increase your mileage by reducing road friction and in the end improve the vehicle’s handling. Even without abuse, front wheel alignment will change under normal everyday driving conditions. Now, before any wheel alignment is done, the car should be road tested, so the technician can see what the vehicle is doing. Then the front end should be thoroughly inspected for worn, bent or broken parts. He should also check that the tyres and wheels match, and the tyre pressures are set correctly. (half the time, the cause of this, is because our tyres have not been inflated with the right amount of pressure)
The question that people always ask is, “how often should I have my wheels aligned”?. Pretty difficult to say an exact duration but some manufactures recommend as little as 10,000 miles. (wow, that’s a whole load of alignment bills $$$ I have to fork out. I do a lot of travelling) So, you decide a mileage, depending on your driving habits. Personally, once a year is a good interval between alignments.
At the end of the day, a yearly alignment can probably add thousands of miles to your tyres over the years. This way, you wouldn’t have to buy new tyres very often and that’s money in your pocket, don’t forget.
