Think a Misaligned Spine Is Bad? Imagine If Your Tires Were Out of Sync!

A father sits in his car with his son in the garage. As they pull out onto the street, stopping at red lights, travelling under highways, looping roundabouts and settling onto boulevards, the old lesson is the same: if the car pulls to the right or left while driving, the wheels are misaligned and need an adjustment. They return home and split a sleeve of Oreos (end scene).

While our concept for a TV commercial was rejected, the above video demonstrates the quick alignment check at Leith Toyota. The insanely fast check clocks in at 58 seconds, which is probably the speediest service visit you’ve ever received from a mechanic. It’s made possible by a series of high-resolution digital cameras that capture three-dimensional images of your tires with respect to one another. The computer spits out an easy-to-read image with a red or green block for each tire, depending on how well aligned it is.

Alignment, of course, is how well your vehicle sits on the road. If all the thousands of pounds of your vehicle’s weight are sitting on misaligned tires, your handling will suffer, gas mileage will decrease and the tires themselves will wear unevenly, which means they’ll need to be replaced sooner than usual.

The old lesson of feeling for vehicle pull in our Oreo commercial is actually not a good test for alignment, even though it’s the one that most of us grew up with. That’s because even tire wear also depends on two funny sounding concepts: toe and camber.

Photo: Super Street

Toe is thinking about your cars as if it were a person, as in: if your tires were feet, would their toes be pointed outward, inward, or straight ahead?

Photo: Tenhultzen Automotive

Camber is a bit different (why couldn’t they pick fingers instead? We don’t know). This measures if your tires lie flat, are angled outward, or angled inward. Believe it or not, some cars are meant to have an angled camber! This can result is increased grip for better handling, and/or offset toe positioning to have an overall even wear.

Fortunately, our quick check system scans your VIN beforehand, which tells it how much toe or camber your tires need, if any. Alignment can be thrown out of whack by hitting a nasty pothole, bumping a curb, changing tires, adjusting the suspension, or experiencing a collision, so if you’ve experienced any of these and have 58 seconds, stop by Leith Toyota for a quick check.