With this easy test, a penny can buy you peace of mind when it comes to your tires and safety.
Place a penny head first into several tread grooves across the tire. If you always see the top of Lincoln’s head, your treads are shallow and worn. If this is the case, your tires need to be replaced.
If part of Lincoln’s head is always covered by the tread, you have more that 2/32 of an inch of tread depth remaining. This means your probably don’t need new tires.
The most important reason to worry about tread wear is safety.
When your tire treads are worn, your car may respond poorly in adverse weather conditions like rain and snow. With good treads, your car will grip the road better. Also, having insufficient tread is considered illegal in many states. And finally, worn treads can make other parts of your car wear prematurely.
Potential Problem Areas:
1. Excessive wear in center tread indicates over inflation of the tire.
2. Excessive wear on shoulders may signal problems such as under inflation of the tire.
3. Uneven tread wear indicates poor wheel alignment.
4. Excessive wear on one side of the tire signals incorrect camber angle.
5. If the treads on the outer section become knobby, it may signal problems with the toe-in value.
To understand why tire rotation is important, it is helpful to understand how weight is distributed among your tires. In rear or all-wheel drive cars, the weight distribution is generally close to 50-50 from front-to-rear. In front-wheel drive cars, the distribution is typically closer to 60-40 from front-to-rear.
This distribution, even in rear or all-wheel drive cars, can cause uneven wear of the tires from front-to-rear. Braking also applies additional stress on the front tires which leads to them degrading faster than the rear tires on a vehicle. Tire rotation aims to help remedy this exact problem.
Additionally, because we drive on the right side of the street in the United States, our right turns are sharper than our left turns. This causes the front left tire to take a larger amount of stress than any other tire on your vehicle and wear down faster.
Tire rotation itself is a simple concept. You want to exchange where your tires are on your car to wear them out as evenly as possible. There are a number of different methodologies depending on whether your car is front, rear, or all-wheel drive. Also important to note is that high performance or sports cars often have differently sized front and rear wheel tires which makes front to back rotation impossible.
Below are two of the patterns used for rear and all-wheel drive cars versus front-wheel drive cars.
In general, it is recommended that tires be rotated every six months or every 6,000 to 8,000 miles. This is within the guidelines for many cars keeping their warranties as well. Most warranties on cars will require regular tire rotation in order to avoid problems simply from neglect.
These four basic tire maintenance tasks will greatly extend the life of both your car and your tires as well. Taking care of these things will also improve the handling and safety of your car, give you better fuel economy, and leave you feeling accomplished after taking care of the car you love.
Have you ever noticed your car’s handling feel especially stiff or ridiculously soft? Chances are that your car’s tires are improperly inflated. Improper inflation has a number of symptoms that differ depending if the pressure is over or under the recommended tire pressure.
As a side note, if you do not know what your tire’s pressure should be, refer to your owner’s manual. Sometimes this information is on a sticker in the glove box itself or along the metal where your car door meets the bar as it closes.
Having properly inflated tires presents a number of benefits that save you some cash:
In a tire with 29 psi recommended pressure, it is not uncommon to find that they may be underinflated by about 6 psi. This may not sound like a huge amount but consider that this is almost 20% of the tire’s recommended pressure missing.
You may find the following plaguing your drive if your tires are underinflated:
Tires deflect, or bend, as you drive and build up heat, which will increase the resistance that your tires face on the road. This means that more energy is required for you to maintain a constant speed and can lead to nearly 5% reductions in fuel economy
Underinflated tires also have their tread life reduced by up to 25%.
On the other hand, overinflating tires also presents a couple of huge problems.
Bumps and road obstacles feel particularly hard or intense, which can be a distraction while driving and also contribute to wear and tear on other parts of your vehicle such as the axles and steering column.
The tire’s footprint, or the part in contact with the road, is reduced with overinflated tires. This means that turning or running over a curb can be especially harmful over time. If you imagine a really tough rubber balloon getting too full that is a good metaphor for overinflated tires.