How do I know if my car needs an Alignment?

Question for today “How do I know if my car needs an alignment?” Welcome to Mercie J auto care. I’m Rick Smith, master certified technician. So there’s two typical things that alignment will effect on a car. The primary one is tire wear, so we’re going look at how the tires are wearing to know if we need an alignment. Our second question for our clients, is the car drifting or pulling one way or the other? Do you have to constantly continue to the direction. The most obvious reason your car would need an alignment is if your steering wheel is off-center. Now I want you to understand that if you have any sort of vibration, it’s not going be an alignment issue. There’s a number of other things that could be, but it’s not going to be an alignment. We don’t want you to spend the money on alignment to try to solve a vibration and still have a problem. Steering wheel off centered or your car drifting or pulling you into another lane of traffic are the two common complaints that we get. The other thing is a tire rotational drag issue. Here at Mercie J, the first thing our mechanics do is to take the front tires off and cross them from side to side. If the car was pulling one way and now it’s pulling the other, the alignment is not causing it. The problem with the alignment is that we can’t physically see it, we have to put it on some equipment that can tell us what the angles of everything is. So look at the tire wear, if we look at this car even though the tires are worn quite a bit, it’s relatively even at the two outside edges. If it’s significantly different, then you have an issue. Look at your feet and think of them as the tires on your car. If your toes are pointed inward, then the outsides are going to drag and get worn. If your toes are inward, same thing and your car needs an alignment so that you don’t prematurely wear out your tires. So I hope this helps you understand a little bit about what alignments are and when you need one. Until next time, safe travels and blessings to you.