More wheel alignment

Just in case you are wondering what wheel alignment actually is or what the different terms mean then we created this page just for you!

In a nutshell wheel alignment is no more complicated than making sure your wheels point in the right directions as much of the time as possible. It gets a bit more complex when you consider the fact that good wheel alignment incorporates not only toe (how parallel your wheels are) but also camber (how vertical your wheels are) and a heap of other measurements. It gets further complicated by the fact that each of these angles affect each other.

Firstly lets talk about toe. Toe plays a huge part in how your vehicle steers and how long your tyres last. Because of this toe is the most commonly checked alignment measurement, commonly called tracking. If you have a vehicle that veers to one side when accelerating or braking then the chances are that something is affecting your toe adjustment. Look at the pictures on the right. They show two hypothetical cars (with no body panels, engines, seats etc), Ok they are fairly shoddy but will demonstrate what I'm on about. The top car has all its wheels parallel the second has its front wheels pointing in, this is called toe in. If the wheels where pointing out it would be toe out - no surprises there then. Click here for part 2