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You’re driving along, minding your own business and having a perfect day, when suddenly…BANG!!

Where’d that pothole come from? How did it jump out in front of you like that?

You drive a few more blocks and you notice that suddenly your car doesn’t drive quite the same. It’s got a pull to one side, the steering suddenly feels heavy and “clumsy,” like you’re driving a dump truck, and the wheel doesn’t want to center itself as readily after you round a corner.

Potholes unfortunately go with the territory once the weather warms up and the trees start to bloom. They result from “frost heave,” a phenomenon that happens when the ground underneath the pavement freezes. The moisture in the soil expands as it turns to ice, causing the pavement’s surface to crack. As temperatures rise and the soil thaws, a hole starts to form under the pavement; with the weight and impact of many vehicles, the pavement surface will start to fail completely over the hole, and a pothole will result.

Thing is, though, you don’t really care too much about how that pothole got there, or the engineering challenge that pothole repair poses. Mainly, you just want your car to drive normally again. You’re smart to be that concerned about it – a poorly-aligned car will wear the tires’ tread unevenly as one wheel constantly tries to push or pull the car in another direction. The added drag from that wheel also means more rolling resistance as you try to head in a straight line down the highway, and added rolling resistance means a penalty in fuel economy.

Your car’s steering and suspension were engineered for very specific angles, in regard to inward or outward skew of the front wheels (toe-in and toe-out) and their vertical orientation (caster/camber). Any deviation from those angles will affect your car’s drivability and handling...and it can certainly result from a hard hit on a pothole or curb.

If your car’s a casualty of a pothole, you’ve come to the right place with Alignment Center and Alaska Car & Truck. After all, it’s right there in our name – we specialize in wheel alignments, with trained and experienced techs and state-of-the-art alignment racks that can restore those angles and fine adjustments back into spec. Still think that wheel alignments aren’t a big deal? Consider this: if a wheel is only 1/8” off of spec and a driver were to take his hands off the wheel, that car would end up 28 feet off a straight line over the course of a mile!

Give us a call, make an appointment and let us get your car driving straight again!