5 crucial reasons to ensure your car's wheel alignment is correct

Changing the car’s tyres is a regular part of maintaining your vehicle, but many motorists underestimate the importance of having their wheel alignment checked and corrected on a frequent basis. Wheel alignment – also known as tracking – helps to ensure that your car’s wheels are aligned correctly and is essential for even wear and safety, but can be easily disturbed by accidentally clipping a kerb or driving over a pothole.

Unfortunately, accurate wheel alignment is one aspect of car maintenance that is often overlooked. However, there are some compelling reasons that wheel alignment should be a regular part of your vehicle’s maintenance schedule, either as part of your annual service or every time you have a tyre change.

Improve the lifespan of your car’s tyres.

All tyres wear, whether they are an expensive branded make or a low-cost budget alternative, so restricting how often you have to fork out to replace them is always likely to be in your interest.

Poor wheel alignment adversely affects the way in which your car’s tyres wear, meaning they are more likely to wear around the edges than in the centre. Consequently, the tread on the tyres is more likely to fall below the legal minimum sooner, meaning that immediate replacement is essential.

If you insist on driving with badly worn tyres, not only do you risk receiving a fine from the police, you may also be invalidating your car’s insurance policy as well as putting other road users at risk.

Enjoy a safer, smoother drive.

If you drive your car when the wheels are incorrectly aligned, you are likely to notice that the quality of the ride is affected, with your vehicle liable to drift to the side of the road despite your best efforts to maintain a straight course. Not only is this somewhat annoying, but having to continually alter your steering to compensate for the drift could be potentially dangerous.

Having your wheels correctly aligned will ensure that your car is able to maintain a constant, straight path along the road, improving both its safety and the quality of your driving experience.

Save money on fuel.

Incorrectly aligned wheels mean that the tyres are unable to grip the surface of the road properly, so your car’s engine has to work harder in order to achieve forward motion, leading to faster fuel consumption and the need to refuel earlier than you would like.

A simple wheel alignment would ensure that your tyres are able to grip the road to the best of their ability, reducing the demand on your car’s engine and helping it to achieve optimum fuel consumption, saving you money in the process.

Reduce the wear and damage to your vehicle

Wheel that are incorrectly aligned expose the components of your car’s suspension to premature wear and unwanted damage caused by uneven roads or potholes, meaning that earlier repair or replacement is more likely, with an obvious knock-on effect on your wallet.

By having your car’s wheel alignment checked regularly, and adjusted as necessary, you can be confident that your vehicle’s suspension is less liable to being damaged by imperfect road surfaces and you increase the chances of problem-free motoring.

Reduce your car’s impact on the environment.

As well as saving money, achieving optimum fuel consumption also reduces your car’s carbon footprint and lessens its negative impact on the environment. As poor wheel alignment means you’ll be refuelling more often, your car will be outputting greater carbon dioxide levels which are harmful to the environment. As this should be a concern to all car owners, a simple wheel alignment check and adjustment could make a sizeable impact on helping to protect the natural world.

With five convincing reasons to ensure your car’s wheel alignment is correct, it makes perfect sense to book an appointment with JT Hughes so you can be reassured that your vehicle is perfectly prepared for the roads this winter.