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What is the relationship between car alignment and wear and tear of the tires.?

I have a 1995 Honda Accord V6. My mechanic told me that i need to get wheel alignment for the front tires because it will save my tires and would increase their life. Also i was wondering if someone could tell me that how is wheel alignment carried out. I mean to say that is it done like wheel balancing where they take the wheels off or in a different manner.

Public Comments

1. Your car currently rides like a bad cart at the grocery store where the wheel is scraping the road rather than riding straight on it... an alignment will fix that. If you get an alignment, you should make sure they balance your tires too because the bad alignment probably screwed them up and it's making your car vibrate.
2. If the front wheels are out of alignment, you can have excessive tire wear and poor handling in the steering. An alignment is done with the wheels on using special alignment equipment. Totally different than wheel balancing.
3. The alignment being out on your car will increase how fast your tires wear, usually if you are getting edge wear on the inside or outside of your tires your car is out of alignment. the tires are on the car during an alignment and the adjustments are done the the suspention components themselves, nothing is actually done with the tires, for ease of explaination the alignment points the tires strait forward and strait up and down so the tires are pointed strait down the road. hope that helps
4. Your mechanic is correct. If a tire isn't aligned exactly right, it will "rub" against the pavement as it rolls and wear the tire out quicker. Alignments are done with the wheels still on the car. They apply little lasers to the tires which shine a beam of light which they use to adjust the suspension until the tires are aligned properly. Unless worn parts are necessary, it is a relatively easy and inexpensive thing to do.
5. As you can see from the previous answers, it is pretty widely agreed that alignment is important to getting the longest life out of your tires. What happens, is that if the wheel isn't facing in exactly the same direction as it is turning, it's like rubbing an eraser across paper -- a wee bit of the rubber gets rubbed off. Of course, tire rubber is a lot tougher than eraser rubber so it doesn't wear down quite as fast, but if a wheel gets badly out of alignment you can completely ruin a brand new tire in just one day's driving! If you inspect your tires regularly, like once a month, you can quickly see if your car is in need of alignment, simply by noticing if one side of the tire is wearing more than the other. It may seem hard at first, but once you know what to look for it's quite simple. See the link below for some diagrams and more details