It is essential that your car’s wheels roll straight, point in the same direction, and are evenly balanced. These factors make it safe to be driven. Services like “wheel balancing” and wheel alignment are offered by Churchill Tyres Norfolk.
Our blog, originally published in 2017 and updated in 2020 to reflect technical and industry changes, explains the major difference between wheel alignment and wheel balancing.
What Is Wheel Alignment And What Is Wheel Balancing?
Wheel alignment describes how the wheels sit on your car, while wheel balancing is done to ensure that your tyres and wheels travel evenly.
Incredibly, wheel alignment has more to do with your car’s suspension than it does with your wheels. It’s all about the direction and angle at which your wheels are rolling in relation to one another.
Your car’s wheels can be aligned in three different ways:
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- TYRE ANGLE IS DEFINED BY TOE. This may be the most common misalignment type. You’re more than likely to have a misaligned toe on at least one of your wheels if your car pulls in one direction or refuses to drive straight when your hands are off the wheel.
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- As the name suggests, camber refers to the angle of your wheel from the front of your car. Your vehicle’s camber is misaligned if your wheel leans to one side or the other. TUNERS HAVE even intentionally altered the car’s camber to achieve a particular look (despite the fact that it has no benefit in terms of tyre longevity). CAMBER is the angle at which the wheels are pointing in the direction of the road.
A sharp turn or excessive constriction on a tyre or wheel can trigger alignment to move. Whacking a nudge too badly can even provoke a Tyre to be out of sync. Even the pressure and stress of driving every day for decades can misalign one or all of our axles. It is a fairly common occurrence, even though it is not all that popular.
Concept Of Wheel Balancing:
As previously stated, alignment is concerned with the direction, angle, and position of your wheels when they are attached to your vehicle. However, your wheels must also be perfectly balanced or they will not roll smoothly. Even with today’s cutting-edge design and manufacturing technology, it is impossible to create a wheel or tyre that is perfectly balanced all the way around. There will always be areas with thicker materials and others with thinner and lighter materials. When one side of a wheel is heavier or lighter than the other, it vibrates as it rotates. The more quickly you move, the more pronounced this vibration becomes.
This problem is resolved by balancing the wheels. A highly precise apparatus is used to rotate each tyre and wheel combination to determine which areas of a wheel are bulkier than the others. The maintenance repairman will then use bonding concretes to fasten small window loads to the thinnest location of your axle. Sometimes these weights are grouped in one location, while in other cases, weights may be grouped in several locations. Every wheel is unique, even the four wheels on the same car.
When you have your tyres replaced, your technician should inform you that a wheel balancing service will be performed as part of the installation process. This is critical because unbalanced wheels will ride poorly and add a lot of unpleasant vibrations. It’s also not uncommon for these small weights to fall off, either because the bonding cement wears out or because you hit a large bump. Inquire about tyre balancing if your technician does not mention it. Balancing is usually included with your Tyres Norfolk installation service, but you should double-check.
