Wheel Alignments

Wheel alignments are another vehicle maintenance procedure and should be considered at least once a year can depending on what car and it's age, it can save you a fortune on tyres, or even a life on the road.

Wheel aligning involves the alignment of the wheels to specification of manufacturers.  This includes the cambering, toe in/out, castoring, and angles of the wheels  when turning.  These are all important figures of wheel geometry and can make a big difference in the long run.  With any of these figures out of specification, it can mean unevenly worn tyres, tyres wearing quickly and even bad handling on the road.

Before taking the test, we need to take some pre-check inspections.  We need to check if there are any free play movements in the under chassis.  If we find any, we need to take note of it first and fix it before moving onto wheel alignment.  We then pump tyre pressure to spec (most road vehicles 32-34,  low profile tyres usually around 36-40 depending on specifications given by wheel and tyre salesman).  Any strange clicking/screeching sounds need to be checked as well.  A test drive of the vehicle is also recommended.  Listen for any sounds or strange behaviour of the steering.

Set turn tables on the hoist, turn the locks on and park front wheels on turn tables.  If vehicle features four wheel steering, it will need turn tables for the rear wheels too.

Next, we need to jack up the car on the hoist.  lift it to the first bar, so that we know it is level.  (leaving it on the floor level may be unlevel, where as the first bar is aligned to be level by the hoist engineer).

Unlock the turn tables so wheels can turn freely.  The cameras will then need to be set up to the wheels. They all have adjustments to fit wheels of most shapes and sizes.  Basically the rest is on screen.

The screen will eventually compare the readings to the specifications entered earlier, that's when we need to use our skills to align it to spec, but that's a whole other topic.