How to care for your car's tyres?

MANILA: Not many of us realise that besides our car's engine, radiator and gearbox – one another thing that's imperative in your car's performance, tyres. Yes, tyres play a crucial role in a car – whether in case of engine maintenance and fuel efficiency or overall performance. Proper handling of tyres is a must. Like limbs are crucial for any athlete to win a race, so are tyres for any car to perform impeccably. Ignorance of its can leave the athlete crippled and the car just a piece of junk. Tyres plays an imperative role in your car – both performance and safety wise. It is the only point of contact of your car to the road, and one wrong step can not only damage your car, but also hampers your safety. There are many maintenance tips that you need to follow to keep your car in the best shape. At CarBay, we provide you six maintenance tips that you should follow to ensure your tyre's longevity and best. 

Tyre Pressure:

It is the first step towards tyre care and also the most negligent one. Usually, the driver might not realise of an under-inflated tyre until there is a huge drop of pressure or a technical light goes on, or the tyre looks really deflated. Sufficient tyre is influential in your car's fuel efficiency, driving performance and also safety. It also reduces premature wear and tear and irreversible damage to the internal construction. Tyre pressure can drop because of a natural escape of air through tyre's components or small perforations or a decrease in ambient temperatures. We highly recommend to check your car's tyre pressure each month and also ensure the spare tyre has the correct pressure. Follow the manufacturer recommended levels, which you can easily find in your car's usual manual. Also, if you want to spare the trouble of checking tyre pressure regularly, you can opt for nitrogen charging that helps retain the tyre pressure for a long period.

Balancing:

Accurate balancing on your car's tyres prevent the tyres from premature wear and also vibrations free drive. It also aids in proper functioning of car's suspension, bearings and steering system. Balancing of a tyre is mostly required when you are replacing a tyre. Also, if you feel your vehicle's one side is heavier or lighter than the rest it means the tyre are the imbalance. This can cause uneven and rapid tread wear, vibrations while driving and uneven wear of front-end parts.

Alignment:

The amount of bad weathered roads, filled with potholes and cracks is huge and this is also among the main reasons of misalignment of your vehicle's wheels. It is hard to gauge wheel's misalignment while driving – but if the wheels are improperly aligned then this can cause rapid, premature and non-uniform wear of tyres leading to bad handling cars and your safety can be hampered. We advise getting your car's aliment checked and rectified in regular intervals, especially if your car has come in contact of a pothole or a kerb and you notice uneven wear. To know more about car's wheel alignment and its importance you can read: Car wheel alignment explained

Tyre Wear and Depth:

Ever tyre manufacture imprints their product with 'tread wear indicator'. The tread wear indicator helps you to monitor wear of your tyre and indicated when its need to be replaced. This ensures maximum traction and grip and eliminates chances of skidding. Changing your tyres before the tread depth is worn 1.6mm, making driving carefree. The tread wear indicator is usually placed on the side wall pointing outward and as the tread depth reaches the arrow head it indicates that the tyre needs to be replaced. You should definitely check this before the monsoons begin, as driving on a worn tyre increases the chances of hydroplaning.

Contact Patch:

Contact patch is the part of your tyre that keeps contact with the road and is hugely responsible for control and handling, comfort and fuel economy of your vehicle. The contact patch is solely responsible for proper traction, therefore, it's not only crucial to choose the right tyres that suit your vehicle (Opt for the manufacture recommended ones). But also regularly maintain them to ensure its best performance. This is crucial because they are the only link between your vehicle and the road and carry the entire weight of your car, a load of up to 50 times their own weight, also respond to driving inputs such as steering, acceleration and braking from the car to the road surface and most importantly absorbs every obstacle on the road.

Service Life:

Every element of your car and even the tyre has a service life, but accurately predicting that time period is next to impossible. As the tyre is made of various materials, each wears differently and in turn affects the performance individually. Not just this, the service life also depends on many factors like weather, road conditions, driving style etc. Moreover, it is not necessary that the tyre survives for the mentioned distance, often external factors accelerate its wear and tear. Therefore, we encourage you to regularly inspect your car's tyres to identify anything which means that the tyre needs to be removed from service.