Questions and Answers

Toyota Corolla Wore Out Tires Q. Dear sir! I bought a new Toyota Corolla in 1999. I have had no accidents or other vehicle damage.The tires still looked pretty good, when the car had 41,440 miles, I decided to replace them. I purchased and had installed new Bridgestone tires.When the odometer read 45,668 miles, I took my car in to workshop to perform the 45,000 mile service.

I was contacted by the service rep and told that my car was badly out of alignment (all wheels for 1° toe out) and recommended realignment service for which I agreed. Recently, I inspected the tires and discovered that all 4 tires are nearly bald. I checked the odometer, and discovered that at 50,560 miles, these tires have just over 9,000 miles on them!

I immediately went to workshop to have the tires inspected and to see if they could discover why the tires went bald so quickly. They made alignment measurements and found that all 4 wheels were badly aligned again (all wheels for 1° toe in). This was the cause of quick tires wearing. I replaced all tires, they performed new alignment. Today the odometer read 55,500 miles and everything fine. All the tires are still in great conditions.

My questions are:

1. Why at the service time all wheels were toe out for 1° each?
2. Why after 5,000 miles all wheels were toe in for 1 degree? (Exactly opposite misalignment)
3. Why in first 40,000 miles and since last alignment and so far all wheel perfectly aligned?

I would appreciate any clue.

Sincerely,
Andrey

A. It seems to me the first shop messed up and caused the tires to wear out. The second trip to the shop put the alignment back to where it was and now it's fine again. They messed up and since no one guarantees wheel alignments, you're stuck.

Everybody believes that when you get new tires, you should get a wheel alignment. And every tire store in the world will tell you the same thing. But the fact is if the tires just wore out due to high milage and they were wearing evenly, then you don't need an alignment.

An alignment machine can cost up to $100,000.00 to buy. That means they have to do a lot of wheel alignments to get it to pay for itself. It is mainly used to sell front end and suspension work. That's where an alignment machine earns it's keep.