When should you change your tire?

The performance of your car and your safety highly depends on your car wheels…most importantly the tires. A weary tire can hamper the efficiency and performance of your vehicle. Although most of the tires are designed with a promise of heavy duty and durability throughout its life, still there comes a time when it starts losing its traction and braking ability. It’s therefore important to deal the matter with great importance as you can- not be lenient with your own life. As they say prevention is better than cure, it is therefore advisable to look for and decide whether or not it’s the time to replace your old set of tires. Certain tips that will help you to decide upon the thing can be discussed as below:

·        You should not know that tires have treads in them. Treads refer to the pattern of grooves molded into the rubber (here tire) on its circumference that makes contact with the road. As the tires are used, the tread gets worn off, thus limiting its effectiveness and traction. Once the tread in down to 1/16^th of an inch, the tire is no longer safe for use. This is when it becomes dangerous and should no longer be used.

·        While you are buying tires look the “tread wear bars”. These are small bridges that are there between your treads. Looking minutely at the tread pattern, you can see that the beginning of these bars start to form between the treads or even run across the tires. As the tires wear out, these bars will get leveled with the tires tread. It’s time to change your tire.

·        Test with penny! You can check a tread using a Lincoln penny. All you need to do is to place it upside down with Lincoln facing you in the center of the tread and if you can see the very top of Lincoln’s head or the copper above it, you should replace the tires immediately and if Lincoln's hair on the top of his head is partially visible, it is time to go shopping for tires.

·        And if you cannot get hold of Abraham Lincoln penny, you can use the tread pattern list or a tread depth indicator or gauge tool to measure the tire’s tread. The gauge is quite cheap and you can own it from your nearby auto parts dealer.

·        Try and make a note on any irregular tread wear. Some of the signs may be wheel misalignment, the need for a tire rotation, or even both. Such uneven tread wear is an alarm that you need to take your car wheels in servicing.

·        Safety measurements are very necessary and your government is also concerned about it. You should therefore check in the legal requirements of the country you are residing in. USA and UK have different types of law regarding the replacement of tire.

·        The perfect solution can be to replace the tires after every 6 years. Although it depends on the fact that how do you use your tire. Most of the people are unaware of the perfect types they need. For example, use of winter wheels Canada is preferred over all-time ones as the winter tires are specially designed to withstand the snow filled roads.