Tire Care and Tire Life

Tires are consumable items, they wear during normal use and have a useful service life. With that in mind you might think tires don't need much attention, but how you treat your tires can drastically increase, or reduce the tread life. Current law requires that car tires must have a minimum of 1.6mm of tread in a continuous band throughout the central ? of the tread width over the entire circumference of the tire. Tires have wear markers at regular intervals in the grooves of the tread - once the main surface of the tire is level with these markers it is time to replace your tire.

Fortunately there are many ways you can increase the life of your tire and with a few weekly checks you can ensure you get the maximum from your expensive rubber.

Tire pressures

Tire pressures should be checked weekly, when the car has been standing for at least an hour to ensure the tires are cool. Under inflation can cause excessive wear on the outside of the tires, heat build up in the shoulders and even sudden deflation (blowout) at speed. Over inflation causes excessive wear down the centre of the tires tread shortening the tread life.

Alignment

Alignment is a general term covering toe, camber and castor.

Toe is how parrallel the wheels are if viewed from above. Usually cars have neutral toe, or a little positive toe to help straight line stability. If toe is out of alignment the inside or outside of the tires will wear extremely quickly.

Camber is how much the tires lean inwards from bottom to top. Like toe, too much negative or positive camber can cause excessive tire wear and upset the handling of your car.

Balancing

Wheel balancing might not increase the life of your tire, but it can help increase the life of your suspension components. When a wheel / tire is out of balance you will feel it as a vibration at certain speeds either through the steering wheel, or through the car itself. A quick visit to your local garage to have the tires rebalanced will usually cure this.

Other causes of excessive tire wear:

Driving style

How you drive your car can have a massive impact on tire wear. A tire that would last over 20,000 miles if driven carefully up and down motorways could quite easily be on the wear blocks in 2,000 miles if slid around every roundabout you encounter!

Overloaded car

The larger the load you place on your tires, the greater the wear. Equally, if carrying a large amount of luggage and / or 4 or more passangers the tires pressure needs to be increased to cope with the extra weight

Wrong load index

Relating to the above, the load index of a tire is the maximum load rating the tire is designed to work with. Placing the wrong load index tire on your car can lead to excessive wear, and in certain cases dangerous handling.