What is a Four Wheel Alignment?
When cruising on brand new blacktop the car just seems to float over the road. Now imagine driving down that same road with your wheels pointing the wrong way. That feeling of floating will not be there. In fact it could feel quite uncomforable.
When your wheels are out of alignment, your tires aren’t pointing in the right direction. This will affect your steering and suspension, but more importantly, it could affect your safety and the durability of your tires and all the parts controlling them.
There are many ways for your car to lose its alignment. Sometimes it doesn’t take much for it to happen.
Pot holes, hitting the curb, bumping into concrete parking stalls are very common ways to knock your alignment out of whack.
Fair wear and tear — as vehicles age, rubber components start cracking or lose their elasticity and ball and socket joints develop looseness. They start to give a little more, progressively getting slightly worse over time.
Alignment angles are measured in tenths and hundredths of degrees or inches. Over time, a slight misalignment can cause a lot of uneven or premature tire wear.
Not aligning your whels means you are throwing a lot of money down the drain on tires because when they are not in alignment you are wearing your tires out much faster. Simple as that. Your vehicle will probably not handle as well as it should and if it is bad enough you could have a pretty difficult time maintaining control of your ride altogether.
All this bad news is, fortunately for you, easily preventable by having your wheels aligned when needed.
There is a great video at