wheel alignment

[Jostudly]

Is is recommended to get a wheel alignment when changing over from summer to winter tires?

[ImStricken06]

Is is recommended to get a wheel alignment when changing over from summer to winter tires?

tough question to answer with a cut & dry, black or white, answer. put it this way, if you get a wheel alignment, and drive out of the shop and travel 10mns down the road= your alignment is already off and not 100%. so a shop could tell you its recommended, but in my vast personal experience, tires dont play a big roll in alignment as much as the car itself plays. so if your car is driving straight now, leave it alone.

care to share your winter tires in this WINTER TIRE thread im building? if you could include your review, spec, pics, that would be great:
any-recommended-alternatives-to-oem-tires-t564798.html

[Jostudly]

My Rogue is driving straight right now. Funny my dealer told me last winter I needed a wheel alignment but I don't think I ever did since I owned the vehicle and its a

[ImStricken06]

My Rogue is driving straight right now. Funny my dealer told me last winter I needed a wheel alignment but I don't think I ever did since I owned the vehicle and its a

wheel alignments can be sold every day, to every customer. from bumps, to speed humps, to pot holes, to curbs, etc = all destroy wheel alignment.
you could literally get a 100% perfect wheel alignment and drive off, in 10minutes of driving, come back in, and get your car re-read and watch it be off again = thus warranting another alignment lol

there really two popular ways you can tell if your alignment is off. camber & toe. (we wont worry so much about the other one)



if you keep your eyes on certain cars you can easily see if their wheels are purposely off set in the chamber: ie; BMW's. especially the X5 has a really negative rear chamber. here is a image i just mocked up for you with red perfectly vertical lines, and then the green lines i lined up with the side-walls of the tires. you can see how the tires sit with a negative chamber. this is technically a miss-aligned car lol... but thats how BMW deigned this car to be. it handles better with this particular suspension set-up

the tires will have uneven wear on the inside, but thats the price one must pay for such an expensive and aggressive vehicle. the insides will wear twice as fast as the outside. that means you get no tire warranty, and you get to buy tires much more often, and you have to keep a serious eye for the inside wear - as the rest of the tire will look fine. <- those are the signs to look at if your chamber alignment is off. if your tires wear evenly, your fine = no alignment needed.


the other alignment issue is TOE. thats when the car steers left or right on its own, because the tires are facing left or right. thats an obvious alignment problem and you tires will also have pitted chunks missing, aside from steering all weird ways.