Does your car need a wheel alignment?

How to tell if your car needs a wheel alignment

There are many consequences of having your car wheels not aligned: your car won't steer straight, it will use more fuel and wear out its tyres quicker, it can cause friction between your tyres and the road eventually thinning them out, and misaligned wheels might even damage your vehicle's steering and suspension components.

While your car comes from the factory with its wheels precisely adjusted for caster (the angle of the front suspension relative to a vertical axis), camber (how much the top of the tyre points into or away from the vehicle) and toe angle (the angle of the wheels relative to the straight-ahead position), this harmony can easily be thrown out of whack.

Simply hitting a pothole, smacking a kerb or wear and tear is all it can take to knock out your alignment and leave you subject to the above-mentioned maladies. So how do you know when you should be making a beeline to your local wheel-alignment specialist? Here are the key signs.

Your steering wheel isn't centred

This is an easy-to-pick warning that your alignment could be out, especially if it's not something you remember noticing earlier. To check it's not just your local roads playing tricks on you, find a large, flat bit of tarmac that's safe. Stop, centre your steering wheel, then drive slowly forwards keeping the wheel dead-straight. If your car veers from straight-ahead, it's check-up time.

Your car pulls to one side

With an uncentred steering wheel, your car might still track straight with it consistently held at the 'wrong' angle. In this scenario, your car will feel like it wants to pull to one side. Some 'pull' is normal – new cars are adjusted to gently steer away from oncoming traffic in a worst-case scenario and the camber of many roads can also cause a car to pull one way or the other. But if your car feels like it's pulling excessively – especially towards oncoming lanes – you should see a specialist.

Your tyres are wearing unevenly

If your car's wheel alignment is spot-on, its tyres should wear pretty evenly. However, if they are wearing more on one side or other, poor alignment is a likely suspect. Tyre feathering or scuffing – when its tread blocks or ribs wear unevenly, leaving one side smooth and low and the other raised and sharp – is another key pointer to alignment issues.

Your steering and suspension sound or feel strange

Correct alignment depends on various steering and suspension components all working together as they were designed to. If those parts are worn-out or damaged, there's more than a good chance your alignment has also gone awry. For that reason, knocking, creaking or squeaks from your suspension or strange vibrations or sounds from the steering should be investigated pronto. In any case, a readjustment will be mandatory when new steering and suspension parts are fitted or repairs are performed.

It's been more than 10,000km since your last one

With correct alignment a matter of fractions of degrees, it takes less tyre and component wear to throw it out than you might think. For this reason, most specialists recommend an alignment every 10,000km or so.