Wheel Alignment
If your car isn’t giving you a smooth ride, or seems to be pulling to one side, or if your car tyres are wearing unevenly, then you may need to have the alignment of your wheels checked. Your wheel alignment can be affected by many different things – hitting a kerb, driving over a pothole, or continuing to drive with excessively worn suspension or steering parts (just one reason why you should always get any car repairs done promptly!). It doesn’t just cause issues with tyres wearing out too soon; it can also seriously affect the safety and handling of your car.
When you take your car into a garage for your wheel alignment, or tracking, to be checked, they will look at both the angle and the direction in which your tyres are set. Each manufacturer specifies what these should be set at. The different settings are usually described (by the technicians at least!), as toe in and toe out, and positive or negative camber.
If you picture each tyre as a foot, the toe is the front. So toe in and toe out simply explains whether the front of the tyres will be closer together, or further apart than the rear of the tyres. Each car will need this set differently, depending on the way the wheels pull – whether towards each other or apart. Camber refers to the tilt of the tyre – inward or outward. This is set by the manufacturer and is the setting which can be affected by bumps in the road or hitting the kerbs, so does need checking regularly.