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TIRE TIPS // MAINTENANCE

Signs You Need a Wheel Alignment

THE SHORT ANSWER

Get an alignment if the vehicle pulls, the steering wheel sits crooked when you are driving straight, or a tire is wearing on one edge. Pothole season, gravel range roads and any suspension work are the three things that knock a Foothills vehicle out of spec.

BY THE RIM2RIM CREW PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2026 4 MIN READ

The five signs

The vehicle pulls. On a flat, straight stretch with your hands loose on the wheel, it drifts one way. Test it on a road you know, because every road is crowned and every crown pulls a car slightly right.

The steering wheel is crooked. You are going straight and the logo is not level. That is the most reliable single symptom there is.

A tire is wearing on one edge. Inside or outside shoulder gone, the rest of the tread fine. This is alignment until proven otherwise.

The tread feels feathered. Run your hand across the tread sideways. If it is smooth one way and sharp the other, the toe setting is off.

The steering does not centre itself. Come out of a corner and the wheel does not want to return. Usually a caster problem, sometimes a binding component.

Loose or wandering steering is on a different list. That is usually a worn tie rod end, ball joint or wheel bearing, and no alignment fixes a worn part. It gets replaced first, then the alignment happens.

What an alignment actually adjusts

Three angles, and only two of them are adjustable on most vehicles.

Toe is whether the tires point slightly toward or away from each other looking down from above. It is the angle that destroys tires fastest when it is wrong, and it is adjustable on essentially everything.

Camber is the tilt of the wheel in or out at the top viewed from the front. Wrong camber wears one shoulder. It is adjustable on many vehicles and fixed on some, where correcting it needs a kit.

Caster is the fore and aft tilt of the steering axis. It governs straight-line stability and self-centring rather than wear, and it is fixed on a lot of modern cars.

A proper four-wheel alignment measures all four corners against the manufacturer's spec and sets the rear as well as the front, because a rear axle out of line makes the front fight it forever.

What knocks a Foothills vehicle out

Potholes and frost heaves. Okotoks spends March and April with roads that have been freezing and thawing since November, and one good hit on Milligan Drive is enough.

Curbs and ice ruts. A hard bump into a curb at parking speed moves camber more than people believe.

Gravel and range roads. Constant small impacts and washboard shake settings out over a season, which is why acreage vehicles need alignment checks more often than town cars.

Suspension work. New struts, control arms, tie rods or springs all change the geometry. An alignment is part of the job, not an upsell after it.

Load. A truck that spends its life with a slide-in camper or a heavy deck sits differently than the engineers assumed.

Why it is worth doing before you buy tires

This is the part worth reading twice. A car that is out of spec will wear a brand new set the same way it wore the last one, and it can take thousands of kilometres off a tire that should have lasted years.

If you are replacing tires because one edge is gone, get the alignment done at the same visit. Fitting new rubber to a bent setup is the most common way people pay for tires twice.

We check the wear pattern on the set coming off before we quote anything, because the tires themselves tell you what the vehicle has been doing.

What a good alignment looks like

Measured, not eyeballed. Sensors on all four wheels, the vehicle's own factory spec pulled up, and a printed before and after so you can see what moved.

Before the measurement, the vehicle gets a look over: tire pressures set, tread depths checked, and the steering and suspension components checked for play. Aligning a car with a worn tie rod end is measuring something that is going to move again next week.

Ride height matters too. A sagging spring changes camber, and on a truck with a lift or a level kit the geometry has already been moved on purpose, so the spec has to account for it.

How often

There is no fixed interval the way there is for rotation. The sensible rhythm here is a check once a year, in spring after the potholes have done their work, plus any time you notice one of the five signs, hit something hard, or have suspension work done.

If you are buying a new set of tires, that is the other natural moment. It is cheap insurance on a purchase you just made.

Quick answers

Is alignment the same as balancing? No. Alignment sets the angles of the wheels to the road. Balancing corrects weight distribution in a spinning wheel. Alignment fixes pulling and edge wear; balancing fixes vibration.

Front-end or four-wheel? Four-wheel on anything modern. The rear axle sets the thrust line the front is aligned to.

Will an alignment fix my vibration? No. Vibration is a balance, wheel or driveline problem.

How long does it take? Usually about an hour, longer if seized adjusters need heat and patience, which happens on Alberta vehicles.

Do I need one after new tires? Not automatically, but it is the best time to check, especially if the old set wore unevenly.

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