...............So people have been asking, what’s the exact difference between wheel balancing and wheel alignment, because they have been hearing this a lot especially when they purchase new tires for their cars. Mechanics will always ask that you come over to the shop for wheel alignment and balancing. Could this duo be one and the same thing? We'll get to know at the end of this!!!
WHEEL ALIGNMENT:
This basically entails having your tires perpendicular to the ground when driving on smooth level roads. By perpendicular, I mean that the angle your tires make with the ground is exactly 90degrees. You might be wondering, is it really necessary after all the car will still drive you to wherever you need to go to. But I'd ask you, do you really want to buy a new set of tires real soon??? Well, if your answer is no, then I guess you should be planning to head to the mechanic’s over the weekend to fix that alignment problem if you tires aren’t properly aligned. Wheel alignment doesn’t just stop at making the tires 90 degrees to the ground, it also entails getting all the tires to be parallel one to another. By parallel to each other, we know that by knowledge of mathematics, if lines are produced by projecting our tire tracks, they should never meet even if the lines are continued to infinity!
One would ask, how do I know if my tires are properly aligned??? Take a critical look at the threading on your tires, does the wearing on it look like it’s happening at the same rate(even) on all parts of the tires??? If no, then you might need to visit the mechanic’s for a wheel alignment soon. In the case where the wearing pattern doesn’t look even, it could be that one side of the tire(say the left) looks more worn out than the other(right). Another sign of this problem is that when you let go of your steering wheel while driving, the vehicle seems to veer off to one side of the road, or you might notice that when driving straight, the steering actually isn’t in the straight position. Most times when the tires starts wearing off conspicuously, the harm must have already been done to the tires and you’ll soon to replace them.
WHEEL BALANCING:
Well, this is different from the wheel alignment problem and the symptoms too are different. In wheel balancing, the mechanics strives to create a balance in the equilibrium system of the wheel and tire assemblage. It’s simply trying to make sure that the weight of each tire and wheel combination are near equal on all parts of the vehicle. The main indicium of this phenomenon is that while driving at certain speeds usually from 45mph upwards, you begin to feel certain unusual and very pronounced vibrations from specific parts of the vehicle such the seats, floor and steering wheel. If felt at the steering wheel, then the wheel imbalance is most likely going to be at the front wheels but when felt on either the seats or floor or a combination of both, then the problem might be from the rear wheels.
The technician tackles the problem of wheel balancing by inspecting the vehicle for heavy spots on the wheel/tire combination and indemnifying the heavy spots by direct application of calculated weight on the opposing side of the vehicle where the heavy spot was noticed. Riding in a car with improper wheel balancing is quite uncomfortable since the vehicle seems to vibrate a lot.
I hope that the problem of the difference between this two has been demystified.
.......keeping it real with ifiokabasibom!