In order to travel down the road safe and straight, every vehicle needs a proper wheel alignment.
A wheel alignment should be done every 12,000-15,000 miles.
There other times when you need one, like when you get new tires, or if you hit a pothole, or a curb, or something that knocks it out of alignment.
In the old days, they used tape measures to do alignments, but now technicians use awesome computerized machines.
Sensors are attached to all four wheels that will send information about the alignment back to the computer.
The machine will send beams of light to the sensors on the wheels, to tell what position they're in.
The technician will make adjustments to the vehicle.
Those adjustments will show up in real time on the computer, so he knows when it's just right.
The alignment is checked in its driving position, so the technician is going to check air pressure and ride height first to make sure those are correct.
The three things an alignment checks are:
- Toe - Which is the tires pointing inward or outward from the front
- Camber - Which is the tire tilted outward or inward
- Caster - Which is the tire pointed forward or backward
Any of these out could cause a bad alignment.
You should also get your alignment checked if you change your ride height with bigger or smaller tires.
When you're done, your mechanic will give you a printout, and hopefully now you'll have a better understanding of what these numbers mean.