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Perfect road holding and comfortable driving thanks to professional wheel alignment
The driving comfort and road holding of your car are largely determined by the chassis. By this we mean the front and rear axle, suspension, rims and tires. This chassis is carefully balanced from the factory for optimal driving characteristics. Logical then that during maintenance, a good look is taken at whether everything is still in order. At Autobest, we have all the knowledge and equipment to make your car literally drive like new. One of the tasks we perform for perfect road holding is aligning your car.
Wheel alignment – also called tracking adjustment or wheel alignment – is the correct adjustment of the position of the wheels relative to each other and relative to the car. If the wheels are no longer perfectly straight, you notice this in the driving behavior: the car pulls to the left or right, the steering wheel is crooked, or your tires wear unevenly.
Good wheel alignment ensures:
Your car's alignment can be disrupted in various ways:
Hit a curb
Once hitting a high curb hard can already be enough to disrupt alignment. The chassis takes a blow, which can cause parts to bend or shift.
Potholes or bumps
Regularly driving hard through potholes or over speed bumps can gradually cause alignment to deviate.
Normal wear
A modern suspension consists of many parts: control arms, wishbones, bushes, ball joints, tie rods, steering rods and stabilizer bars. Through normal wear on these parts, alignment can slowly change.
Replacement of parts
After replacing parts on the chassis – such as shock absorbers, struts or control arms – the car often needs to be realigned.
Collision
Even a light collision can already affect alignment, even if the external damage is limited.
How do you know if your car needs to be aligned? Watch for these signs:
Recognize one or more of these signs? Stop by for a check.
You may have heard of terms like camber, caster, toe-in and toe-out. These all relate to the position of the wheel relative to your car. What do they mean?
This is the angle of the wheel relative to the vertical, viewed from the front of the car. If the top of the wheel tilts outward, we speak of positive camber. If the top tilts inward, there's negative camber. The right camber ensures optimal tire contact with the road surface during corners.
The caster is the angle of the steering axis relative to the vertical, viewed from the side. A positive caster ensures the steering automatically returns to the center position after a corner. It influences stability when driving straight.
This is the angle between the wheels themselves, viewed from above. With toe-in, the fronts of the wheels point towards each other, with toe-out they point away from each other. The right toe setting prevents unnecessary tire wear and ensures stable driving behavior.
Simply put: deviations in these settings cause your car to no longer track properly. This manifests in restless road behavior, where the car, for example, tends to steer left or right without you turning the steering wheel.
When a customer reports to us with a complaint about driving behavior, our mechanic always takes a test drive first. Not every complaint means alignment is needed.
Unequal tire pressure
Sometimes unequal tire pressure is the culprit. If one tire has 2.0 bar and the other 2.5 bar, the car pulls towards the side with the lowest pressure. After bringing all four tires to pressure, the car drives properly again.
Crowned road surface
A crowned road surface can also cause confusion. The driver feels the car is pulling to the right, but the wheels are simply following the curvature of the road. Wide tires with low sidewalls are particularly sensitive to this.
Ruts
On the highway, deep ruts from trucks can cause the car to seem to pull. The tires follow these ruts, especially with wide, low tires.
Our mechanics can immediately determine during the test drive whether there's actually a problem with alignment, or if there's another cause.
If it turns out alignment is needed, we have modern alignment equipment to perfectly adjust your car. We work with a 3D alignment system that measures all angles and distances with millimeter precision using cameras and sensors.
How does it work?
The result? A car that drives wonderfully straight again, with a centered steering wheel and even tire wear.
As a general rule: if the tires are properly pressurized and the wheels are straight, the steering wheel must be properly centered. If it deviates to the left or right, alignment is often necessary.
Our mechanics adjust everything properly according to factory specifications, so you can drive safely and comfortably again. After alignment, you receive a report with the measured values before and after adjustment.
Customers sometimes confuse 'alignment' with 'balancing'. However, these are two different things:
Alignment (wheel alignment)
This is adjusting the position of the wheels relative to each other and the car. It affects driving behavior and tire wear.
Balancing
This is eliminating imbalance per wheel by applying lead weights to the rim. This is necessary when imbalance manifests in unpleasant vibrations in the steering wheel, especially at higher speeds.
When to balance?
Balancing is needed with:
Sometimes vibration is the result of irregular tire wear, so-called 'cupping'. These are wavy wear patterns in the tread. In that case, replacing the tires is often the best option, because balancing doesn't solve this.
You're also at the right place at Autobest for balancing and installing new tires.
We recommend having wheel alignment checked:
The costs of wheel alignment depend on the type of car and whether only the front axle or all four wheels need to be aligned. Many modern cars have 4-wheel alignment, where the rear wheels are also adjusted.
Roughly you can expect:
Want to know exactly what it costs for your car? Contact us for a quote.
Does your car pull to the left or right, is your steering wheel crooked, or do you see uneven tire wear? Stop by for a wheel alignment. We check the current position, align your car according to factory specifications and ensure you can drive comfortably and safely again.
Schedule an appointment via our website or call us at 0499 - 390 475. With a properly aligned car, you drive more pleasantly, safer and save money on tires and fuel.
