Anyone know the difference between allignment and balancing?

[dkbavaria]

I am reposting this because no one answered my question.



Last month I was driving and a car in front of mine stopped abbruptly because of an accident up ahead. I hit my breaks, and my tires screeched and burned a little rubber, I slowed down enough to hit the car in front of mine only with a little bump. My car and the car in front had no scratches on the bumpers.

But after this abrupt stop and skidding of my tires, when I drive my car over 55 mph, my steering wheel slightly vibrates and it isnt a smooth ride like before.

What do I do? My tires are brand new, so its not them.

is it my alignment?
is it my balancing?

what do these things do? what do they mean?

thanks

Dhruv Bavaria

[500KCamry]

Sounds like a tire fault.

Maybe you got a small flat spot on one of your tires. As it wears it will come out.

Maybe you lost a balancing weight on one of your tires. These are sometimes placed on both the outside and inside of the wheel rim.

Maybe you dislodged some mud/dirt on the inside of you tire rim. Pull the tires off, one by one, and clean the inside of the rims.

Or, you could just take it to a tire shop. Ask them to rotate your wheels and check the balance of each. They'll clean the inside of the rims while they're at it. Shouldn't cost that much.

[itzsteven]

bring it to discount tire, they will fix it for u.

[cam2Xrunner]

Sounds like flat spots, if you bought road hazard protection you will be able to get new tires for around 30 bucks each(cost of the new roadhazard plus mounting)

The tires would go out of balance if the tire had been worn down it one spot. This would make the tire heavier on one side, thus throwing the balance off.

Get 2 new front tires, hopefully you bought the roadhazard protection.

And to answer your ? in the tite. balancing involves mounting the tire/rim onto a machine that spins the wheel and detects where the balance is off on the wheel. It will tell you where to mount wheel weights to the rim, to counter balance it.

An alignment involves placing the car on a rack and attaching "heads" to the rims. Like in this picture.




Here this link explains it pretty well
http://www.familycar.com/CarCare/AlignmentBalance.htm