The Importance of Tires

One of the more common requests I hear from our customers is “While you’ve got the car in can you check the tires for me?” and I love to hear it. Of course we check the tires of every car that comes in as part of our complete inspection but that isn't why I love to hear it. The reason is because back when I was first starting to work on cars it was something I rarely heard, people just didn't think about doing maintenance, beyond a tune up, like they do nowadays and when it comes to maintenance tires are one of the most important things to look out for. But what does it mean to check a tire? It goes deeper than just making sure it's inflated to the right pressure, in fact just by looking at your tires we can find symptoms of many other potential issues your car might be having. 

Checking for wear

Tires wear out, it's one of the unavoidable truths of life, but making sure they wear out correctly is extremely important. Uneven wear can be caused by a great many things: Under inflate your tires and you'll have too much wear on the edges, over inflate them you'll have too much wear in the middle. Feathering can be the result of a poor alignment and cupping the result of a worn suspension. Any of these conditions will drastically shorten the life of your tires. 

Balance and Placement

Did you know tires have to be balanced? It involves placing weights in specific spots on the rim to ensure they spin properly. Along with proper balance it's important to rotate your tires every six months or 6,000 miles to ensure they wear evenly. 

Checking for damage and cracking

Another big thing we check for is damage, this comes in two forms. The first being making sure there are no nails/screws/glass in the tire that will cause it to leak. The second form of damage we check for is called dry rot or cracking. This is when a tire is too old and the rubber walls of the tire have dried out and are starting to crack. When this happens a tire needs to be replaced regardless of how worn it is. 

If you would like to make an appointment to get your tires checked you can schedule one here on our website.