Tips For Making Your Tires Last Longer
Having safe and reliable tires on your vehicle is essential. Not replacing your tires when you should can adversely affect driving performance in addition to just being dangerous.
The problem is tires can be expensive to buy, so you need to make sure you do everything you can to make sure your car tires last as long as possible.
There are several steps you can take to make sure you get the maximum value from those Goodyear tires you bought by optimizing their lifespan.
Conduct Regular Tire Checks
Some of the most important steps involve the completion of checks. These checks don’t take long to complete and they’re vital in protecting the condition of your tires.
- Check tire pressures at least once a month; try to check more often if you can. Read your vehicle manual to learn what the correct inflation pressure is. Use a pressure gauge to check the pressure in each tire.
- Check the wear on tires. Tires worn to a depth of 1.6mm should be replaced as the legal minimum depth is 1.5mm. If the tread on the tires appears to be uneven, the wheels of your vehicle may need to be balanced. Completing this work equates to extended tire life.
- Make sure to have regular car maintenance checks carried out. Maintenance checks can identify issues such as poor tire alignment and incorrectly balanced tires, which can wear out tires at a faster than normal rate.
Drive Sensibly
- Your driving may be affecting the speed with which the tires on your car wear out. There are steps you can take to address this.
- Stick to speed limits.
- Speed limits are not only important from a safety point of view. If you drive too fast, the excess heat from high speed driving is bad for the tires.
- Drive consistently
- If you’re one of those drivers who like to mash the accelerator even though you know you’re going to need to slow down again almost immediately, you need to stop it and drive consistently. Having to frequently brake because of unnecessary high speed starting and stopping not only causes damage to your tires, it means you also need to replace the brake pads more often.
- Avoid obstacles
- If it’s possible to do so, you should avoid driving along routes where issues with potholes are common. If you do have to negotiate this type of route, reduce your speed. Doing so can help protect your tires from damage.
Taking care of the tires on your car is an important task, if you want you and your passengers to remain safe on the road and if you want to make sure your tires last for as long as possible.
Do you have other tips for extending tire life? Please share them in the Comments. Thank you. I don’t remember where I got this from so please don’t start doing this without confirming but I remember hearing keeping your tires slightly over inflated by up to five pounds is a way of extending tire life.
There’s also getting regular tire rotations. Rotating tires regularly helps each tire wear more evenly, which will prevent one part of an individual tire from wearing out prematurely.
Thank you, Joe, for the tip – most helpful.
Gerardo