What is the difference between wheel alignment and dynamic balancing?
2 Answers
The differences between wheel alignment and dynamic balancing are as follows: 1. Dynamic balancing of a car refers to adding balance weights to the wheels to achieve a balanced state when they rotate. 2. Wheel alignment is based on the four-wheel parameters of the vehicle, adjusted to ensure good driving performance and a certain level of reliability. Below is more information on wheel alignment and dynamic balancing: (1) Dynamic balancing: A car's wheel is an assembly consisting of a tire and a rim. Due to the uneven distribution of mass in various parts and the fact that tires and rims are not perfectly round, when the wheel rotates at high speed, it may wobble or bounce, causing the driver to feel wheel vibration or steering wheel shaking. To prevent or eliminate this phenomenon, weights are added to the wheel in a dynamic state to correct the balance of the wheel's edges. This correction process is known as dynamic balancing. (2) Wheel alignment: Wheel alignment mainly involves adjusting the toe-in, camber angle, kingpin inclination, and caster angle. For non-independent suspensions, only the parameters of the drive wheels need to be adjusted.
When I first started driving, I often mixed up these two things. Simply put, wheel balancing deals with the instability when the tire rotates—like when your steering wheel shakes like a vibrating phone at high speeds, which means the wheel's center of gravity is off, and small lead weights need to be attached to the inner rim to adjust it. On the other hand, wheel alignment adjusts suspension parameters, such as when the car keeps pulling to the right or the tires wear unevenly like saw teeth, requiring adjustments to the chassis angle settings. Last time after patching a tire, I only did wheel balancing, but the car still pulled to one side—the mechanic checked and found the alignment was off. So these two are really not the same: one fixes shaking, the other fixes pulling.
