Yes it does.
If your wheels aren’t travelling in the same direction, they’ll be working against each other and you’ll experience increased tyre wear.
You might be able to feel it or you might see strange wear on your tyres. You might be suffering from poorly aligned wheels if you need to fight your bike to stay upright or if it drops easily into one corner but not the opposite side.
The most common way that a motorcycle’s wheels are out of line is when the rear wheel isn’t correctly aligned in the swingarm. The easiest way to check this is to count the markers on your swingarm adjusters and ensure they are equal on both sides. Some times they can be equal and the wheel alignment is still out. This can be due to a few factors, the main one being that the front wheel is out of alignment.
Where there are no adjusters on the front wheel, if it is out of line it could be down to the fact the bike has been dropped or involved in a prang. This can bend the forks or more likely, twist them in the yokes. If you suspect this, you can easily check it by setting your bars to be dead straight and get a mate (or the other half) to check whether the front wheel is pointing in the right direction. You may also be able to diagnose a more severe case of this by moving your bars from full lock to full lock. Look at how much gap there is between the handlebar and the tank on both sides and check that it’s even.
You can straighten out forks that are twisted in the yokes by loosening off the bolts but it does require the right tools and to be confident in what you are doing.
If you suspect anything, visit your local motorcycle tyre shop and they’ll be able to take a look for you.
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