Top 4 super simple ways to take care of your tyres

Taking proper care of tyres is the first step towards making your drives safe and stress-free. With these simple 4 steps you would be able to get your tyres to deliver their best.

We don’t really pay attention to tyres on our car except when they get punctured or require replacement. Even then, our extent of attention to these important components is very limited.  But this negligence can have some serious consequences.

Not taking good care of your tyres can often lead to frequent punctures, bad ride quality, poor vehicular stability and braking efficiency. We bet none of this sounds good. But do we need to put in a lot of effort when it comes to taking care of our tyres?

Nah! It’s dead easy. Just a few measures can help your tyres go a long way.

1) Level of air pressure:

Believe it or not, but the most crucial step towards improving the life of your tyres is by maintaining correct air pressure. Air pressure straight away impacts the ride quality, handling precision and vehicle stability.

Over-inflated tyres make your car more bouncy and unstable, especially while negotiating corners. Because of excess pressure, the tyres wear out faster from the centre than the sides.

Under-inflated tyres, on the other hand, consume more fuel to roll and increase tyre tread wear, thereby reducing the life of the tyre. Running tyres on low air pressure also reduces fuel-efficiency and these tyres wear-out quickly from the sides.

So, if you ever notice your tyre wearing-out relatively quickly or in an uneven fashion, just try maintaining correct air pressure and see if things get better. If not then you must continue reading this article.

2) Tread Depth:

Well, if your tyre doesn’t have adequate tread depth, then you are looking at various troubles, including less powerful braking, imprecise handling and reduced vehicular stability, especially over wet surfaces. This is where it becomes necessary to have tread depth of at least 1.6 mm on your tyres.

A tread pattern on a tyre comprises of grooves, sipes and ribs. All of these work towards providing traction and stability to your car. But lack of adequate tread depth can cause your vehicle to skid and lead to accidents, especially at the time of braking. So, it is always necessary to ensure that tyres on your vehicle have a tread depth of at least 1.6mm.

3) Balancing and alignment:

Both of these are the factors which an owner should never ever neglect. Proper alignment of wheels aid in increasing the tyre life as much as possible. Not only they improve stability but also improve handling of a vehicle. But in case of misalignment, radials are more prone to wear and safety is put at risk. It leads to poor cornering and makes it quite risky to drive on wet as well as slippery surfaces. Furthermore, it generates vibrations and causes problems with suspension system. So, it is mandatory that wheels are correctly aligned to ensure a safe as well as comfortable drive.

On the other hand, balancing is another aspect that ensures smooth running of tyres. Vibrations on your steering wheel, especially at high speeds, and reduced steering precision are classic symptoms indicating that your wheels require balancing.

4 ) Rotation of tyres:

Most of us usually skip this step because what difference changing position of tyres could possibly make? Well, a lot!. This is the step that gets you bang for your bucks. We often complain that our front tyres wear-out faster than the ones at the rear. This happens when we do not rotate the tyres.

Let’s understand something that it is the tyres at the front axle that are responsible for turning your vehicle and even pulling it ahead. So, quite obviously, these are the ones that experience maximum stress, especially while braking hard.

What rotation does is that it ensures even wearing of tyres, thereby negating the need to replace front tyres sooner. It also allows you to extracting the maximum miles from your tyres.  We recommend tyre rotation after every 5000 to 6000 kms so as to get the best from the tyres.

Conclusion

No matter how luxurious, quick or comfortable your vehicle is, it simply cannot roll without tyres. That’s how important they are. And they are not too demanding- just a few simple steps and your tyres would always deliver their best.