How Safe is Your Car – Are your tyres properly maintained?
The car tyres are the only contact point between your car and the road surface. The car tyres are not only responsible for driving you from point A to point B but it also plays an important role in stopping when you hit on the brakes. A good set of well-maintained tyres also ensure a smoother and safe ride while driving.
The Tread
Do your car tyres still have good tread? The tread on the tyres provides the vehicle with proper road handling and grip while driving. When the tyres go “bald” or in other words the thinning of the tread, it becomes very dangerous while driving especially during rainy days. It could lead to easy oversteer or understeer. Hence, it is a necessity to check your car tyres tread from time to time. There is one indicator in between the grooves of the tyre’s tread, if your overall tread reaches the same level of this indicator, it means your tyres are due for change. Do note that some insurance companies do look into this when they are doing any loss adjusting when you submit a claim due to an accident that occurred on your own account. However, for more information, you do need to check with your insurance companies to be sure of their terms.
Lifespan
Have you seen cars that are broken down by the roadside where you could see it was obviously due to a flat tyre but the tyres just don’t go flat but seem like it bursted like a balloon if I shall describe it. Every tyre has their lifespan. An average tyre should have a lifespan of about five years. Exceeding its life span the tyres may lose its elasticity and it will harden. This is sometimes obvious by just looking at the tyres itself where you could find some dry cracks around the edges of the tyre. If you do see dry cracks around your tyres, change it fast. An expired tyre will have a risk of bursting or exploding while you are driving at high speed. It becomes very dangerous if it bursts while you are driving fast, it will cause the car to lose control immediately. A tyre bursting is unlike a tyre runs flat. A tyre running flat will retain the tyres body only without its air pressure. A burst tyre will leave its rim meaning, running only on the rim of the burst tyre wheel. You could easily check the age of your tyres by the side indicator, you could find a four digit number, the first two digits are the week of the year followed by the year. Example 1220 means 12th week of the year 2020.
Maintenance – Balancing, alignment and rotation.
Your tyres need routine maintenance. Usually, car owners are advised to have it maintained and do tyres balancing, alignment and rotation every 10,000km mileage. However, if your steering wheel starts to feel shaky and vibrates at a certain speed it is a sign that your tyres need balancing. If you feel that you are driving straight but your car is moving to the right or left then you could need to send in for an alignment check. It is good to have your tyres rotated, meaning swapping the front tyres to the back and vice versa. By doing rotation you will have all 4 tyres to have an even wearing. This is because if your car is a front-wheel-drive car, it will be more taxing on the front tyres because all forces of driving and braking are biased towards the front. This maintenance process and need is good knowledge to know because not all service centres are meticulously in depthly checking or even care regarding your tyres maintenance, they could be more interested if your tyres are in need of a replacement instead.
Tyre Pressure
Next would be your tyre pressure. One of the methods to have well-maintained tyres and a comfortable drive is that you have to maintain the tyre pressure correctly. Different cars would have different tyre pressure requirements. To check what is the recommended tyre pressure by the manufacturer you can refer to the driver’s side door frame. There you can find a sticker indicating the recommended tyre pressure. It is advised to check the pressure every 2 weeks. So it is good to have a tyre pressure gauge somewhere kept in the car. Is a simple device and doesn’t cost much.
Spare Tyres
Last but not least, would be your spare tyre. You could be running on four tyres but the fifth that is stored as spare does need some routine check as well. Do keep a newer spare when you are replacing your other 4 tyres. From time to time, do check the tyre pressure, you don’t want to be stranded during an emergency and your only hope is flat as well. However, one last note on safety before I end my sharing on the care of your car tyres is that , if you do experience a flat tyre on the highway, do not attempt to change it by yourself, do contact the emergency number of that highway. It is very dangerous to change a flat tyre all by yourself. Leave your car and go to a safe spot if there is any just a distance away from the car while you wait for help to arrive.
I hope you gained some knowledge with these sharing tips that could help you in caring for your car more and its tyres. I do wish everyone a safe drive every time when you are hitting the road, and I hope you have your car and tyres checked from time to time when it is due for maintenance. You can check in with your car service centres for more details and information regarding the care of your tyres.
If you do not have a preferred car service centre, you can check out IMS Motors at https://www.imsgroups.com.my/ for more information. They are specialised in performance tyres as well. For the ladies drivers out there, if this is not something you are familiar with, you can also rely on them for all your necessary maintenance needs. Have a Safe drive!
