What is balancing and alignment? You know how your tyre operator puts your wheel onto a machine and stick some weights onto your rim? That’s balancing. The weights help to even out the distribution of mass of your entire wheel ensuring that the wheels have an even and balanced rotation. When your wheels are not balanced, you will experience excessive vibration through the steering wheel at speeds as the wheels are not rotating evenly. This can be uncomfortable and worrying for the driver. It also causes the tyre to wear unevenly, affecting the tyre's performance and longevity. Wheel alignment, on the other hand, is the adjustment of the wheel angles to ensure that the car tracks in a straight line when the steering wheel is pointing straight. The benefits of proper balancing and alignment are that your car is significantly more comfortable and sharper to drive and more importantly, reduces unnecessary wear to your tyres. As a driving enthusiast, I need my car (Perodua Axia) to perform as accurately as possible, hence I spend the extra time and effort to get my balancing and alignment checked as often as I can. But if you’re not as anal as I am, you should still check your balancing and alignment every 10,000 km.
