For the Sake of Your Car Tyres: Wheel Alignment -

Details for For the Sake of Your Car Tyres: Wheel Alignment

ID:	3289
Author:	webaddiction
Title:	For the Sake of Your Car Tyres: Wheel Alignment
Article:	Most garages selling car tyres offer a wheel alignment service but not all customers know what this is or what it is for when they come to buy new tyres. As its name suggests, wheel alignment is to ensure that your car wheels are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the ground. You might say, surely all wheels are like this anyway? They should be but wear and tear, especially that aggravated by speed bumps, can put the wheels out of alignment, as can damage caused by touching a kerb or hitting carriageway debris. Misalignment can cause a braking car to pull to one side or the other, give inaccurate steering and drastically shorten tyre life. What is involved? There are usually three factors to be checked and if necessary, adjusted. The first test is to ensure the wheels are vertical as viewed from the front of the car, this is checking the camber angle. The second check is slightly more complicated. A cars front wheels are turned from side to side when you steer. Imagine looking at a front wheel from the side of the car. If you had X-ray vision, you would see that the steering pivot is not vertical but leans back at the top, towards the rear of the car. This is the castor angle, which, if out of adjustment, can cause all manner of strange steering behaviour when you drive. The third and last check is the tracking. Again looking from the front, the car tyres are usually cross-eyed, they toe-in. This is so slight you can not see it but the setting is important. The tyres are generally set to toe-in so that the when the car is driven, the forces acting on the front wheels and suspension make the front wheels run parallel to one another. If the tyres toe-out (think Marty Feldman) through misalignment, or toe-in too much, steering accuracy will suffer and tyre wear will increase. On many cars it is also possible for the rear wheels to be misaligned. Should car tyres be worn through misalignment and/or have worn or damaged steering or suspension parts, or even the wrong tyre pressures, correct alignment could be difficult or impossible. The technician will ensure you know about what, if anything, needs adjusting, repairing or replacing. Wheel alignment used to be achieved with mirrors, weights and string. But such paraphernalia is old hat now; technicians usually use computerised, laser-equipped measuring installations. With these, they can measure and adjust wheel alignment quickly and extremely accurately. So while you enjoy a refreshing cup of tea or visit the shops, your car wheels will be aligned with precision, which will extend the life of your car tyres. What is involved? How can you keep them this way? Simple, all that is needed is a little care when you drive. Avoid any debris on the road and watch out for potholes. Take your time over speed pads and do not straddle speed bumps as this damages tyres and suspension; drive so that only the wheels on one side of the car go over the bump. Most importantly, when manoeuvring, do not hit kerbs About the author of this article: louise slee is a web marketer and driving enthusiast for over 25 years, with no penalty points to date! see her articles at http://www.merityre.co.uk/ where she cuts through the technical jargon and explains car tyres in laymans terms
Category:	Recreation: Autos
Date:	June 22, 2009 08:02:55 AM

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