The Tyres

So let us not move to another important part of the car, The Tyres. Again, these are usually over looked. The first thing is to make sure the tyre pressures are always right, depending on what the particular car model says they should be. Over inflated tyres wear faster, they make the brakes less effective, and reduce traction among other things. Under inflated tyres reduce stability, worsen the fuel economy, and damage the rims among other things also. So it is important to get them right. The correct tyre pressure for each car model can be seen either on the owners manual or around the drivers door area in most cars and should be checked preferably in the mornings. Rotating of tyres should be done in accordance to the car specs. Generally, for front wheel drives, the tyres in the front are taken to the back, while the back ones are taken to the front. The new front tyres are then changed from the left to the right.

I have noticed that we tend to buy bigger tyres than what the car asks for. This isn’t too good because it throws your speedometer and odometer off slightly, affects your gear ratio and gear changing if you are driving an automatic and damages the transmission on a long run. However, they also tend to make the car more attractive and improve the fuel economy (not in all cases)
When buying new tyres, we usually see some codes written on it. Let me use P215/65R15 as an example. The P stands for passenger, the 215 stands for the width of the tyre in mm, the 65 is the ratio of the height to the width, R stands for Radial and 15 stands for the rim size. Tyres with bigger widths have better traction and grip on the road but aren’t fuel efficient because of the increased friction.

When buying new tyres, always check whether they are rotation specific or not. If they are rotation specific, then they need to be installed properly, with the arrow pointing in the right direction of rotation (i.e the forward direction). Failure to do so will cause rapid wear in the tyres. Also check if the tyre contains some coloured dots (commonly red and yellow). The dot should align with the valve of the tyre. By doing so, you are limiting the amount of wheel balancing you will have to do and so it reduces the vibrations of the car. The general life span of a tyre is six years, used or unused and the date of manufacture is usually written on the side wall of the tyre.

There are more to tyres and car maintenance in all, but these are the basic things to know. And remember, cars are man-made mechanical machines. You can do your best at observing all the rules, but still things can go bad or fail and they depreciate with age. This is peculiar to machines and even the human body. Our own part is to do the best we can at maintenance so that we can use the cars for as long as possible with as little stress as possible.