All You Need To Know About Wheel Alignment!

Wheel alignment plays a crucial role to set the performance of a car. It refers to an arrangement of a vehicle’s suspension. It is very important to drive on an aligned wheel because it is safer and can ensure a car remains in a straight traffic line rather than drifting away. Sometimes due to poorly maintained aligned wheels, the performance of a car is severely impacted.

The main cause of wheel misalignment can be either pressure on shocks, tyres or suspension wear. The misalignment in wheels can become apparent while driving if there is uneven wearing of a tyre, squealing voice of a tyre, and jerking or vibration in the steering. When a vehicle is parked, make sure to look whether wheels are standing straight or are slanting inwards or outwards. This helps to figure out if there is any wheel alignment issue. In case the angles have been misaligned, they can be easily rectified by a professional by correcting the angles.

Here are a few important Wheel Alignment Nottingham angles to make sure the vehicle has a correct wheel alignment.

1.Front toe- This is also known as Tracking. It varies from the front to the back of the front wheels. If they are seen from above, the front wheels would either point to the centre line of a car or another side. If they point to something else, it is called a toe-out. However, if they point to the centre line, it’s called toe-in. Such a setting is designed to reduce the wearing of a tyre. If the angels are not set equal to the centre line, the steering wheel would not be straight.

2. Rear toe- This is again designed to reduce the wearing of angle. It is also used to ensure a straight line is followed. Here, the wheels must be equal on both sides, the thrust angle is advised which would result in uneven wearing of a tyre and uneven line of the steering wheel.

3. Thrust angle- It is also known as Thrust line. It is the angle of the middle line in coordination to the rear axle. The middle line should be 90 degrees from the rear axle which would mean there is zero degrees thrust angle. Any point other than 0 will cause an imbalance between front and back wheels or ‘crabbing’ that would make the steering go either left or right.

4. Camber- It is the angle of the road wheel where it is measured from the vertical. There are two types of camber, positive and negative. When the top of the wheel is inclined away from the car, it is a positive camber. When the top of the wheel is inclined towards the car, it is negative camber. This angle helps in cornering and handling the steering. This angle should be equal to either side of the car. In case the camber is set correctly, Tyres Nottingham would wear just on one side. If the negative camber is more, the inside edge of a tyre will wear, and if the positive camber is more, the outside edge will wear.

5. Castor- This angle imitates the angle of a fork. It helps to offer stability in a straight line but can be adjusted in a few vehicles. The main problem behind castors is only accidental damage. These angles can majorly influence these drifting patterns. Vehicles in the UK are often made with the higher left castor than the right.