So a bud of mine, probably typical to people that come to you for car questions said their KIa, history of good in snow now is an ice skate. New tires due to wear on the inside of the tires, still bad weather ie snow control problems. Did you get an alignment? No we had one a while ago. Good tires put on? they were expensive enough. You should get the alignment checked based on the fact you had to replace tires due to uneven wear. We had it done a while ago. You can hit a pothole or anything and I think you should check it. Reply we have put enough money into this car, and now the steering feels loose too. 100k and I think it is falling apart he says. Just complaining. People have little clue about making everything work together I think.
Absolutely! And on wet roads, and even on dry roads!
See if you can get your bud to post here. We’d be happy to explain it. But I’ve learned over the years that it’s impossible to help someone unless they’re willing to be helped, so if he won’t bother… well, all we can do is wish him well.
Your post is incomprehensible to me. Is this a conversation you are having with yourself or someone else?
It’s lacking in organization, but everyone isn’t as erticulate as me I day evening door hinge month tire trunk leaf friend HR Block. (no offense meant, just an attempt at humor).
I think Barky has a friend diving around with a serious handling problem, Hopefully he’ll be able to get his friend to join the conversation.
He’s going to ruin his expensive new tires as he skates through winter.
You know and we know that your friend is making a mistake. He’ll probably be replacing those expensive-enough tires much sooner than necessary. He might also be paying an insurance deductible for a crash that could have been avoided, either by losing control in the snow or by having a failure of a front-end component that gave him some warning. You can show him this thread later today when there are more replies, but chances are that it won’t change his mind, unfortunately.
many folks are cheap. they think spending $50/tire is expensive. you could ask the OP his definition of cheap vs expensive tires.
With a mis-alignment, the two tires are arguing with each other over which one wants to go in which direction ( even the rears can be out of spec and cause this. ) On dry pavement one of them usually wins that argument or you don’t really notice because your constant minor corrections are more in control.
In slick conditions you really notice this argument since your corrections really cause the transfer of directional priority to the other tire…and back …over and over.
He needs an alignment.
’‘I cant’ afford that’’ I can hear him saying.
’‘You, can’t afford NOT to’’ is your reply.
As for whether the vehicle is falling apart, well, it IS a Kia. Depending on what year, he may be right - the more recent Kias appear to be very good cars, but that’s a relatively new development; at one not terribly long ago time Kia was terrible.
That said, if he’s going to continue driving it, then he should get it aligned.
My vote is for the alignment. As to your friend’s comment about already having an alignment done, maybe they did and maybe they didn’t.
Sometimes people will claim things just to end the discussion.
On occasion I’ve pointed out to someone that a tire (or plural) was very low on air pressure. The usual response was “I just checked them and they’re fine…”.
A blind man could see otherwise but why argue the point.
They could have bumped a curb the day after the alignment. Get it checked, not that expensive
Thank you all for the comments.
I knew what I was saying, but I will try and work on readability in future posts.
I am glad the concurrence is the alignment is a good idea, and if there are other issues causing loose steering they should be picked up by the mechanics that do the alignment.
What is the general concensus of other owners of that model car? We have discussed the poor handling of full size vans on wet and icy roads ad nauseum. Could that vehicle be a poor performer from the factory? And while tires are the most significant controllable variable in handling of a correctly alligned automobile a good front end man can often push caster and/or camber and/or toe beyond factory specifications and improve handling significantly. But the front end man must know more than the machine he is reading.