The most important as well as the most neglected parts of your car are your tyres. They are most susceptible to wear and tear which is why it is important to ensure they are always in the best condition. Irrespective of the number of safety features you install in your car, car tyres should be working at their best so that your drive is smooth and accident free.
As a vehicle owner, you will probably be aware of how expensive tyres can be. Hence ensuring that your tyres last as long as possible is a smart move. When your tyres last long, the cost of premature tyre replacement disappears.
An average good quality tyre lasts for about 20000 miles. Despite damage due to exposure to heat and sunlight, they can last upto 7 years. However certain mistakes can bring down the tyre life.
Read on to find out if you are making these mistakes.
1. Bad Driving Habits
The life of your tyres (along with the passengers) depends greatly on the driver. Your driving style is important.Driving too fast and braking aggressively leads to greater heat generation. This will cause a faster wear and tear in the tyres, reducing their lifespan.
Driving over potholes, or other bad roads also reduces the life expectancy of your tyres to a great extent.
2. Improper Tyre Pressure
It may seem like a little thing, but tyre pressure goes a long way in determining your tyre life. Tyre pressure should always be optimum, not just for proper driving conditions but to ensure the tyre doesn’t wear faster, as it will with low pressure. The tyres also need to constantly monitored for tyre pressure, since pressure can decrease unexpectedly especially in winter.
3. Excess Weight Applied
So your car has a large boot space? This means you can place just about anything in your car right? Wrong! No matter how spacious your vehicle is, it is necessary to ensure your car, is not weighed down. A loaded car will need to apply extra effort on the brakes as well as the tyres. If you are going to be carrying heavy loads, get special tyres, also called load reinforced tyres, which are built to support heavy loads.
4. Inappropriate Wheel Alignment
Wheel alignment implies that the front wheels should be parallel to each other. Sometimes, the alignment is not proper which can cause your tyres to wear out unevenly, and can affect the safety of the vehicle in the long run. Often when the vehicle goes over bumps or potholes, the alignment gets disturbed. Hence if you cannot change the terrain over which you are going, check your vehicle for alignment at any fitting centre frequently so that you tyre life is not cut short prematurely.
5. Forgetting to Rotate
What most drivers forget is that all four tyres of your vehicle do not undergo wear at the same rate. It is a well known fact that front tyres wear faster, hence to ensure that wear on the tyres is distributed evenly, rotate your tyres on a regular basis.
How do you take care of your tyres?
By Azzam Sheikh
This article has been written by Azzam Sheikh, part of the team, at Tyre-Shopper, UK.
