As you drive, your tires encounter all kinds of bumps, ruts, and vibrations. Over time, these minor obstacles can dramatically shift the alignment of your wheels, affecting the car’s steering and efficiency. Here are the signs you need to bring your car in for a wheel alignment to get it back to peak performance.

When to Schedule an Alignment

1. Squealing Tires

Tires squeal when they encounter friction and resistance, or when they can’t grip the road correctly. While even well-aligned tires may make a noise when turning or accelerating hard, the more noise you hear, the more likely the tires are misaligned.

2. Uneven Wear

When your tires are tilted, they’ll wear unevenly. Look at the tread depth. If it’s dramatically different across the width of the tire, especially between the right and left tires, your wheels are incorrectly aligned.

3. Pulling

If the car pulls to the left or right while driving, poor wheel alignment is a likely culprit. Other possible explanations include uneven tire wear, which is caused by misalignment or infrequent rotations.

4. Crooked Wheel

Similarly, if your steering wheel comes to rest off-center when you’re driving straight, it’s likely your wheels aren’t aligned correctly. While it is possible for your mechanic to line up the wheels perfectly and leave the steering wheel crooked, making it “match” the wheels is a standard part of the alignment process and shows all the steps were followed correctly.

5. New Tires

Every time you get new tires on your vehicle, you should also have the wheels aligned. This will help adjust your car to the new size and tread depth of the tires, while also accounting for any changes that occurred while driving on your old ones.

If you’re looking for tires in Lexington, KY, choose Lee Tire. With two tire shops in Lexington and Nicholasville, they have served Fayette County for over 20 years, providing used and new tires from brands like Michelin®, Goodyear®, and Cooper® as well as balancing and alignment services. For questions about their stock or to schedule service, call (859) 254-6157 or reach out online.