Top 6 Tips for Longer Lasting Tyres

A well-maintained set of tyres is essential for car safety. Ensuring your tyres are roadworthy isn’t only a requirement for the best comfort while driving, it’s also a car check you need to do on a regular basis for your security and safety. With this in mind, we’ve pulled together our Top 6 Tips and Advice for Longer Lasting Tyres!

1. Regular Tyre Pressure Checks

Having your car tyres pumped up to the correct, manufacturer-recommended pressure is imperative to get the maximum life from your tyres.

Under-inflation of tyres is a common problem. Through under-inflation and when the pressure of your tyre drops too low, the function of your tyres will be severely restricted. In some extreme cases, under-inflation can even result in the tyres dislodging. An easy indicator of under-inflated tyres is excessive wear on the outer edges of the treads.

Additionally, over-inflation will cause some problems. For instance, if your tyres are over-inflated, it might cause the handling of your car to be unpredictable. Also, your tyre tread will wear faster than normal.

To find the recommended tyre pressure for your car, you can simply check your car owner’s handbook. In some cars, you can even find it on the inner side of the door or in the glovebox. You can also get the information online by doing a simple search.

2. Check Tyres When They Are Cold

As you drive, your tyres warm-up. This is due to friction between tyre and road, and inner friction between the air molecules and the tyre. As soon as you’ve driven anything more than a few kilometres, the tyre’s temperature will increase and subsequently raise the tyre pressure.

If you check and fix the pressures to when the tyre is hot, then they could effectively be underinflated when the tyre cools down.

3. Avoid Mixing Different Brands of Tyres

Carmakers design cars to operate with four tyres that function to a consistent standard. By blending different tyres, you can undermine the car’s grip and handling as different tyres are created with a different purpose in mind.

Ideally, all four of your tyres should be of the exact same model. If you need to replace two tyres at one time, you should make sure that at least two tyres on each axle match.

4. Check the Depth Of Your Tyre Tread

Tread patterns on tyres are designed to disperse surface water, and thus maintain contact between road and rubber, where the rubber chemical maintains the traction.

As the tyre wears, the grooves in the tread become shallower. This cuts down the volume of water that they can disperse and raising the danger of aquaplaning and lack of control.

Once the tread reaches 3mm, you can start to look around for your next set of tyres.

5. Check for Tyre Damage

It’s important to carry out regular visual inspections of your tyres. Just because you don’t feel any danger when you’re driving doesn’t mean your tyres are always in good working order.

Punctures can result from nails and other things that get lodged in the tyre tread. The puncture may not happen immediately but if left untreated, the tyre will eventually fail.

Tyre blowouts can also be caused by ageing tyres as they lose their resistance to the damaging effects of ultraviolet rays from sunlight.

6. Wheels, Suspension & Steering

Accelerated tyre wear can be caused by misaligned steering or from worn suspension. Check the tyres frequently to notice if this is happening. If you have any concerns, you can ask for a wheel alignment and the condition of your suspension during your next tyre shop visit.

This article was submitted by Automobile Tyre Pte Ltd.

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