Signs Your Ford Vehicle Needs a Wheel Alignment

Poorly maintained roads and driving mishaps can result in wheel misalignment. When your tire alignment is out of balance, tires can’t effectively make contact with the road, which can put you in a dangerous position. While most wheel misalignments are minor irritations, it’s important to bring your Ford in for an alignment service as soon as you notice any of the following signs.

Car Pulling to the Side

The most common sign of alignment issues is having to hold the steering wheel further to the left or right in order to keep the car straight. You might also describe this as the car being pulled to one side on its own. Soft pulling is when the vehicle tends to pull slightly to one side, which may not even be noticeable until you loosen your grip on the steering wheel. Hard pulling is a much more aggressive pull, which tries to pull the car to the left or right automatically. When dealing with hard pulling, you may have to yank the steering wheel back into place or hold it to the side to keep your vehicle driving straight.

You can easily check whether your Ford is properly aligned or not by gently easing off the steering wheel while driving on a straight stretch of road. If you notice that the car begins to veer to the side, you’re faced with alignment issues and need to have the vehicle serviced. Waiting too long could result in bigger issues.

Steering Wheel Vibration

Poor wheel alignment can cause your steering wheel to vibrate. The vibration is caused from prolonged misalignment. If the problem is severe enough, the entire car may shake when you driving down the road. The reason for this is two tires are pulling against one another, attempting to veer the vehicle in two separate directions. Vibrations like this typically only happen when the wheels have been misaligned for a long period of time, or if you’ve ran over a curb, encountered a deep pot hole, or had some other unfortunate mishap with road debris.

Uneven Tread Wear

Keeping an eye on your tires is good practice since you never know when you could be losing tire pressure or wearing down the treads. While tread wear is unavoidable, uneven or rapid tread wear suggests that the wheels are misaligned. If you notice that one or two tires are more worn than the others, or that your new set of tires are wearing down faster than usual, you need to bring your Ford in to have the issue resolved. Poor alignment will shorten a tire’s life by thousands of miles, compromising your Ford’s suspension and steering. The longer you let it go, the bigger hit you’ll take to your wallet trying to resolve all of these other issues.

If you suspect your wheels are out of alignment, bring your vehicle to Pearson Ford for servicing. Our expert technicians will have your Ford back in balance in no time.