Houston wheel alignments are doing more than just keeping Houston cars as safe as possible on the road — they are also helping to protect car owners from spending too much on gas.

Getting your alignment done is one of the top ways of maintaining your gas mileage.  It works like this: Anything that creates rolling resistance will make your car have to work harder to make its wheels go around, which causes your gas mileage go down.  When your car’s wheels aren’t aligned correctly, that will create rolling resistance in a major way.  The solution is to find a foreign or domestic car repair shop, and have them check and/or fix the alignment.

Another thing misaligned wheels do is to create uneven wear on your tires.  Often this means that a narrow strip either on the inside or the outside of the tread will wear all the way down, requiring you to get new tires even though the rest of the tread is still good.  This means more tires in our landfills, so that’s another way keeping your wheels aligned correctly helps both your wallet and the environment.

Other things that can cause your gas mileage to go down include:

• Low air pressure in your tires – Check them at least once a month and fill to the recommended PSI (usually 32 PSI).
• Dirty or too-heavy oil – Whether your oil is too thick from not being changed frequently enough, or because you used oil that was too heavy of a weight, this can cause your gas mileage to go down.  Use and 5W-30, 10W-30, and 10W-40 weight oils in your car’s engine.
• Dirty air filter, spark plugs, etc. – Regular tune ups are important to maintaining your car’s gas mileage.  Dirty air filters, dirty or mis-gapped spark plugs, and other minor issues can have a major impact on your gas mileage.

Your local foreign or domestic automotive repair specialist can help to correct any of these problems.

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