Frequently Asked Questions

What causes my car to vibrate, bounce or shake?

A rough or bouncy ride is caused by a tire or wheel problem. It usually occurs at highway speeds which can be especially annoying. Who wants to bounce and shake all the way to their destination? The primary causes of vibration are:

  • Improperly balanced tires and wheels
  • Uneven tire wear
  • Damaged, bent, or out of round wheel
  • Out of Round tire

Tires must be installed, inflated, and balanced properly on undamaged wheels. The tires must be regularly rotated and checked for damage in order to maintain a smooth ride and prevent premature wear. If uneven wear is detected the vehicle needs to be aligned to ensure a comfortable ride and to achieve maximum tread life.

What is an Alignment?

Have you ever noticed wear on the outside edge of the tread of your tire or lumpy or uneven wear?

An alignment must be preformed by a skilled technician who understands the relationship and correlation of all of the angles to the other components of the system. Precise measurements are taken using multiple lasers to determine the existing position. The technician will then reset the components to bring the suspension back to the original manufacturer’s specification. The proper alignment optimizes performance and prevents premature tire wear.

Your cars chassis and suspension system is an ingenious system that connects the body and frame of your vehicle to the wheels and tires and ultimately to the road. It consists of many moving parts that allow you to safely steer and maintain control of the vehicle. Proper operation of the system requires a precise alignment of the angles between the wheels, tires, and other parts of the suspension system. As components wear from driving and the occasional bump in the road, it is important to readjust the wheel and tire angles of caster, camber, and toe-in to prevent abnormal and pre-mature tire wear. These adjustments are known as Tire Alignment.

Check Engine Light

Your car’s internal combustion process, the burning of gasoline to produce power, is precisely controlled by an onboard computer and a system of sensors to ensure that the optimum amount of gasoline and air are present at the same time that the spark plug sparks to maximize the fuel efficiency of the engine. The reason for the exactness of this process is to maximize fuel economy and minimize the exhaust emissions. It is interesting to note that the actual burning of the gasoline in the engine is no different than it was one hundred years ago, but the control process and the efficiency is much improved from even the last decade.

The computer is constantly measuring temperatures, pressures, fuel flows, air flows, and the exhaust gas composition. As the computer senses change in these measurements it makes adjustments to optimize the engine operation to run within the engine design parameters. 

When one of the parameters is out of range, the computer stores the information as a code and turns on the Check Engine Light. The car may appear to be operating normally, but something is not within the normal operating parameters internally. The code can be cleared in the computer and the light will go out, but it will return if the situation is not corrected.

A diagnostic computer can be connected to the car’s onboard computer to access the problem code and to see all of the data that the computer collects about the combustion system operations. It takes a skilled technician who truly understands the combustion process to connect the diagnostic computer and to interpret all of the data that is available. The technician may even need to drive the car with the computer hooked up to truly diagnose the systems problems. It is not uncommon to find several problems which must be addressed in the correct order to restore the engine to proper operation. Once restored to the original operation the Check Engine light will go out, and your car will be operating as fuel efficient as possible.

Tire Pressure Monitoring

The tires on your car will perform safely and deliver maximum tread life when maintained at the correct inflation pressure. The proper inflation pressure is identified on the inside of driver’s door on the car manufacturer’s specification. All vehicles produced today are equipped with tire pressure monitors. There are several different monitor systems, but generally they include electronics attached to the valve stem which is mounted on each wheel. The monitors detect variations in inflation pressure and communicate with your cars computer which will turn on the light on your dash when there is a problem. Many of the current systems will indicate which tire is low (for example left rear), and require a simple reprogramming when the tires are rotated.

Nitrogen inflation can greatly assist with low tire pressure alarms. Nitrogen does not change pressure as much as air does when the temperature changes. This means that tires inflated with Nitrogen do not fluctuate in pressure when the seasons change. Also Nitrogen does not migrate through membranes as easily as air does due to the molecule size of Nitrogen. Finally, Nitrogen does not have any water vapor in it. This means that a major source of rust has been eliminated which can save the internal fittings and the expensive monitoring electronics, which can be expensive to replace. 

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