i have a 03 honda civic went to get new tires .the man said i should get a tire alinement but the tires wee not wearing out uneven???i have 54000 miles on the car should i get a alinement never had one before got the car new
Wow. You are about to get me to contradict myself.
Normally I believe that if the tires are wearing smooth and evenly and the car is driving and handling properly an alignment is not necessary just because of getting new tires. And so many shops use alignments to recomend unnecessary work that I normally suggest skipping it.
But, since your vehicle is six years old and has never been algned, an alignment may be a good idea just on general principles. But get it done at an independent chassis shop and pay for the service. It’s cheap, and that way you’ll know they’re not oding it just to rip you off.
You can consider my response to be a “ditto” of mountainbike’s advice.
While it is possible that your wheel alignment is perfect, I sincerely doubt that it is, after at least 6 years of driving on the deteriorating roads that most of us are subjected to daily.
I am an extremely frugal person, but I typically have a 4-wheel alignment done once each year. And, it is certainly a good idea to have a 4-wheel alignment done if you are buying new tires.
My opinion is that an alignment should be performed about every 40-50k miles and even more often is the vehicle has suffered a curb strike, severe potholes.
I’ve done a lot of alignments in which the car exhibited no symptoms and tire wear was normal but yet the alignment was out of spec in one way or the other.
Sometimes it can take 10k miles for tire wear problems to appear.
In the case of the caster specification, this affects the handling of the car quite a bit and seldom ever causes a tire wear problem.
i want to thank the same mountain bike,vdc driver and ok4450 for there responce its greatly appreciated…i will get a alinement BUT WILL SHOP AROUND
thank you again
joe