Tire Care – How to Take Care of Your Tires

Tires are important part of a car. A good tire can enhance ride experience and performance of average car and a bad one can make you feel worse in the super cars. A bad tire car hampers the mileage, traction, maneuvering capabilities, safety and much more. You should take equivalent care of tire like that of a car.

You should check your tires once a month, at least. Here are few things you should have as a standard checklist:

Pressure: An accurate or near to accurate inflation is the best for your tire and thereby your car. An over inflated car is too stiff to provide the grip whereas an underinflated tire can lead cause damage to itself and thereby reduced tire life and tire failure. You should refer to your vehicle’s placard to for recommended inflation pressure of the tire. The pressure of the vehicle is affected by the climate. A difference of 5°C results in 1 psi (pounds per square inch) or about a 7-kPa (kilopascal) reduction, almost. A weekly check up of the tires should be done during winters especially for the ones that have extreme weather condition.

Alignment: Tires that are properly aligned will perform much better. They provide good traction on wet surface. If the alignment of the tires are not right the tire will always run either left or right. Badly alignment tires will have a way too shorter tread life as the rubbers will scrub off very soon. You should get the alignment checked after every 25000 km or six months whichever is earlier.

Balancing: Whenever you would feel that your tire is wobbling or hopping you should check the balancing of the wheel. We recommend you should get the wheels checked for balancing after every 20,000 km or whenever you feel vibration. If there is a feeling of vibration on steering wheel then there is a balancing issue with the front wheels and if the same is felt in the driving seat it means the rear wheels need balancing.

Tire rotation: Tire rotation basically is interchange of a tire’s position from one to another. For eg: front tires are shifted to the rear and vice versa. We recommend tire rotation to be done at after every 8,000 to 10,000 km.

Look at the diagram shown below for better understanding.

Tread: Tread depth of the tire is important to be considered because a poor tread means poor response to brakes. Tire’s tread is related to the safety of the driver. If you are able to see the solid bar of rubber flush with two adjacent ribs of the tread you should replace the tires with a new one. We recommend to check the tires after every 5,000 km.

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