Be honest – how often do you think about wheel alignment? Probably about as much as you think about the Orioles winning the World Series this year – not very much.
Certified Mechanics Have the Right Wheel Alignment Equipment
Wheel alignment is one of those processes that’s technically pretty complicated but practically easy to understand.
Wheel alignment, which is sometimes called tracking, simply means adjusting the angles of your vehicle’s wheels to bring them into alignment with the manufacturer’s specifications.
The reason that this is more simple in theory than in practice is that the mechanics at All Around Auto Repair take into account the caster, camber, and toe angles of your tires and use special equipment like a clamp, camera unit, and an LED array to make the adjustments.
Fortunately, the only thing that you have to do is bring in your vehicle in to All Around Auto Repair and say that you want a wheel alignment!
Protect Your Investment
The fact is, though, that wheel alignment takes about an hour and has a ton of benefits for your vehicle. Wheel alignment can save your steering and suspension systems and ensure that you get more life out of your current set of tires.
Without a wheel alignment, every time that you hit a pothole you could be doing damage to your suspension. By having your wheels aligned to the manufacturer’s specifications, your car’s suspension system and tires will take the hit more gracefully. It would still be better to steer around the pothole!
In the shorter term, a proper wheel alignment should provide you with a smoother driving experience and better fuel economy. Instead of having your vehicle drift to the right or the left due to poor alignment, once you get your wheels aligned you’ll notice that you no longer have to overcompensate with your steering.
Newer Vehicles Might Need Wheel Alignment
Although all vehicle owners can experience these benefits by getting their wheels aligned, modern vehicles might need to get their wheels aligned so that their advanced driver assistance systems work properly.
Newer vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems rely on mechanical alignment issues being properly calibrated. Your anti-lock brake system and electronic stability control actually depend on having your wheels aligned properly, in other words.
Advanced driver assistance systems come with convenient features like adaptive cruise control and lane departure warning systems, but those features depend on your wheels being aligned so that accurate information is conveyed to your vehicle’s electronics.
Case in point is that many vehicle manufacturers now require that mechanics perform an electronic reset on these advanced driver assistance systems after a mechanical adjustment like a wheel alignment.
Problems are Easy to Avoid
There’s an expression that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That basically means that you should deal with a problem at the earliest possible time to avoid a bigger problem later, which might be difficult or impossible to affordably fix.
That’s definitely true with wheel alignment. The auto experts say that you should have your alignment checked at least once per year or every 10,000 miles of driving, whichever comes first.
The more that you drive, the more likely that your wheels will gradually become misaligned; and the more that your wheels become misaligned, the higher the chances that you’ll experience uneven wear and suspension issues.
You should really have your wheels aligned every time that you have your oil changed or get a tune up at All Around Auto Repair since wheel alignment only takes about an hour and protects your vehicle’s systems. Get started and schedule an appointment today.
