6 Simple Tire Tips

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6 Simple Tire Tips
Feeling pressured to take care of your tires? Good. But we make it easy.

Here's a true story that highlights an important aspect of car care: A pickup is tooling down a two-lane highway. The driver notices something's not quite right when the truck hits 55 mph. There's a vibration, a resistance, some weird thing that's definitely amiss. And, surprise, surprise, it doesn't go away. The driver heads to a mechanic and tries to describe this strange malady. The mechanic walks around the truck and says, "The problem could be that big bulge in your back tire." Oops. Could this be one of the reasons why everybody keeps telling you to check your tires' health regularly?

Even though rubber comes from the ficus elastica tree, it does not regenerate itself once it turns into a tire. New tread will not be growing on your tire like a new limb on a tree. More bad news: Even if you don't put thousands of miles on your vehicle each month, just exposure to the elements will cause the rubber and other compounds in the tire to deteriorate. While tire maintenance seems like just one more thing to remember, like tiresome oil changes, lube jobs and the occasional tune-up, you should realize those four little tubes of rubber carry the weight of your vehicle and its passengers. They are the only things that keep the vehicle from careening through freeway rush-hour traffic like a pinball gone mad. The bulge on that pickup could have popped while the driver was checking to see if the vibration was still there at 60 mph. You can push the Tire Guardian Angel just so far.

Time Well Spent

The good news: you can get a good idea of your tires' health just by looking. One way to trick yourself into actually performing this task is to develop the habit of checking your tires while you're waiting at the gas pump. Here's what you have to look for:

1. Tread: You should have some. A minimum of 1/16-inch to be exact. You don't have to carry a ruler to gauge tread. Stick a Lincoln penny, head first, in the groove between the treads. If the tread doesn't come up to or beyond the top of Abe's head, there's not enough to provide good traction.

2. You shouldn't see the steel belts in a steel-belted radial. If you do, you failed the adequate tread test a long time ago. Another true story, same driver, different pick-up. This truck had a flat, which was the least of its tire problems. The driver tried to pump in air with a tire-fix-it aerosol can to drive to the tire store. As the can pumped in air, it gurgled out between what little was left of the tread. Bad.

3. Check the level of inflation. To be accurate, invest in a tire gauge, keep it in the glove compartment and check tire pressure before the tires have had a chance to heat up. The factory recommended inflation is printed on a metal tag usually on the driver's doorjamb, or inside the gas filler cap or the glove compartment door. Some vehicles, particularly pick-ups, will include two recommendations, one when the truck is carrying a load, the other for light or no loads. You can't really eyeball proper inflation. Radial tires have softer sidewalls and will look a bit under inflated when they're not. Proper tire pressure provides the best vehicle control, better gas mileage and longer tire life. Inadequate pressure causes excessive heat to build up in the tire—that heat can cause tire failure. If that's not enough reason to maintain recommended inflation levels, under-inflated tires were determined to be a contributing factor in SUV rollover accidents.

4. Uneven tread wear. You can expect to see a shade of difference in tread wear from the outside to the inside of the tire. Anything beyond that slight variation indicates a problem. That problem could be as easy to resolve as proper tire inflation. Other causes range from misaligned wheels (a relatively quick, inexpensive fix by a mechanic) or faulty suspension components. Ignoring the symptom only adds insult to injury. Eventually the cause of the uneven wear will rear its ugly head, then you'll have the repair plus the cost of new tires to deal with.

5. Cracks, cuts, bulges, blisters on the sidewall. The first two offenders can be a sign that while the tire may not have covered close to its warranted miles, it's been on the car long enough to need retiring. The mileage rating on tires can be used as a gauge of quality, but how and where you drive and the years on the car can cause tire deterioration before they've reached that benchmark. Bulges and blisters are serious flaws—the only place they should be driven is straight to a tire retailer.

6. Vibrations: We covered that flaw in our intro experience. If you've checked your tires regularly, kept them properly inflated, you'll never experience that nasty shake you can feel through the steering wheel. That vibration is the death rattle of a tire.

You're probably thinking this is all a royal pain. Humor us—next time you pull into the gas station to fill-up your tank, run this quick tire check. We bet you'll finish the checklist before your tank is topped off.