Hot answers tagged tires
15
While I believe the tire shop gives free rotation to get you in the habit of coming back to them every few months so they can sell you more, it can be important to rotate your tires.
It all depends on the wear of the tires
I have had sets of tires that wore extremely evenly and I only rotated them once. Other sets of tires I have had wore very unevenly ...
15
My wife had a similar problem on her car and it turned out the problem was the wheel, not the tire. We'd had enough sand and salt on the road this winter that she had corrosion / gunk building up right at the bead. The tire shop dismounted the tires, cleaned up the seating area on the wheel and then remounted the tire. The problem now seems to be solved.
12
Personally I wouldn't drive on that tire - if it delaminates while you're driving you're risking a blowout. You get bulges like that if the rubber basically separates from the various reinforcement plys in the tire and as the air in the tire heats up from driving, it'll slowly expand. All it takes then is something that pokes/cuts the bulge to turn your car ...
10
The reality is that snow tires live in a world of wet snow and salt. That's about the worst possible combination for corrosion. Your best bet in that situation is to dilute the salt-water solution, usually from straight water rinsing. Any remaining risk of corrosion will have been greatly decreased by your rinse.
My inclination is to rinse off the tires ...
10
First, the critical caveat:
You are the driver. You have to make the decision. It ultimately doesn't matter what we say.
Given, that, I would say NO, it is not safe to drive until the weekend. Get the broken tire fixed or replaced as soon as possible.
You have two problems:
Top speed limitation: the donut is top-speed rated for 50 mph (check the ...
9
Tire condition can be interpreted in several ways, visually being the most prominent. Usually excessive tread wear can be seen quite easily using the famous penny test (using an old penny, one where Lincoln's head doesn't overlap the outside edge of the coin).
From Wikipedia:
If part of Lincoln's head is covered by the tread, the tire has a legal ...
9
Winter tires in Winter and Summer tires in Summer. With very rare exception the "All-Season" tires are really only very good for 3-Seasons, or for places where the roads are always kept clear in the Winter.
Do all 4. Having a mix of Winter/Summer tires will adversely affect handling and braking.
9
Remember that lug nuts are exposed to literally every element that could possibly cause corrosion. It sounds like your last nut is stuck due to some rust or oxidation that you can't see. Here's how I generally approach a badly stuck nut:
Check your safety gear: eye protection, jack stands, everything to keep yourself from getting killed when this wheel ...
9
There are three common methods.The first is to buy a tread depth gauge which measures tire tread in 32nds of an inch. The general standard is 3/32's minimum.The second is a penny. Insert Lincolns head into the tread,if the tread does not hit Lincolns hair it is due for replacement. Do this test in five different spots,if two are not hitting the hair replace ...
7
The answer is NO. It is never a good idea to replace a single tire, because each tire has different performance characteristics. You may not notice it during day-to-day driving, but any non-ordinary actions, such as swerving to avoid an accident, turning or braking in a rain storm, etc you may suddenly find the car doing something completely unexpected. ...
7
There are major benefits on a track: you have much lower tire deformation with a low profile tire so you can corner harder. You can also accelerate and brake harder, and your tires get to temperature much faster as there is less rubber to warm up.
On a normal road having very low profile tires can be a negative - they don't soak up bumps as well as a higher ...
7
Not sure what damage might happen to the diff, but on the front axle this might cause the car to pull one direction or at least create extra stress due to one wheel gripping differently than the other side.
I would suggest replacing the tires in pairs. Although if you only had a couple thousand miles wear, then it might not be a big deal.
7
No. Please don't drive on that tire.
You are seeing a large scale deformation in a portion of the tire that's not designed for loads point stresses like that. There's pretty clearly a thin layer of rubber standing between the marginally acceptable and explosively decompressive states.
And, just so we're clear, please don't drive for a couple of days on ...
7
Any tyre design is a balance between cost, grip, longevity, water displacement and rolling resistance. Change one, and chances are you'll adversely affect the others...
Personally, I would always put grip and water displacement (which affects wet grip) above all the others on a priority list. The difference between those "fuel efficient" tyres and normal ...
7
You can calculate the size of the effect from simple geometry. Tire wear reduces the diameter of the tire, which reduces the circumference of the tire.
New passenger car tires typically come with 10/32" to 11/32" of tread depth (source). Tires are considered fully worn-out when only 2/32" of tread remains. So the tire has lost 8/32"--9/32" on the radius, or ...
7
Can I put the tires in the opposite direction on the rear-end on my front wheel drive configuration?
Following answer assumes you've got tires with directional thread (if you flip the tire 180 the pattern will mirror upsidedown).
Among other duties, tire threads are responsible for "pumping" the water out from below the wheel when you drive through it. If you reverse the directional tires then the water will be pumped to under the wheel, effectively ...
7
The Info provided by COSTCO is on paper correct, if you were say using a tire with a speed rating of 118 mph (T), and you were in Germany cruising at 140 mph, the tire could overheat and cause this problem.
However, in your case, you just had a flat tire driven on flat. If they check the tread, area, or the valve stem, from the take-off tire, they will ...
7
Rubber degrades over time, it looses flexibility, micro-cracks appear. When put under load the tire could fail catastrophically.
It is usually said that normal lifespan for a tire is ~6 years, then it should be replaced (irregardless of wear).
The structural integrity of a tire can degrade over an extended period of time. When that occurs, tires are ...
6
Naturally, the number of pros that I
have available to ask is limited so
I'm wondering what a wider audience
will say.
The nice thing about a question like this is that it isn't up for opinions. The cost / benefit ratios can be measured. Grassroots Motorsports routinely does this sort of analysis. For example, in Speed Holes by Per Schroeder ...
6
Nope, there is no need to glue the tyre on, the airtight seal is simply made by the rubber against the alloy. Many tyre fitters do use a sealing compound however, which helps to fill any imperfections in the wheel surface that might allow air to seep through them.
From my experience, the pressure needed to get the tyre to settle seems to vary massively ...
6
They use a rotation sensor, or rotation speed sensor. When the tire looses air it's circumference becomes smaller, so the sensor's signal changes and set of the light.
Added: See this site for full explanation Subaru's TPM
6
Caveat: all of the following information is heavily dependent on the tire construction, tread pattern, application, etc. If you care more about a particular application, you should research that specifically:
A higher profile tire will potentially affect the following factors:
Comfort: increased - you've increased the vertical air space in the tire, ...
6
They might fit but your speedometer will be significantly off and you will feel like you've lost a lot of torque.
Tire Rack (as always) has a lot of useful technical reference information on sidewall markings. The sidewall aspect ratio is the measurement in question. That represents the sidewall height as a percentage of the section width (the footprint). ...
6
If it was me - I would get the tyre replaced.
In a car I would think about plugging it, but there I have 4 wheels and a nice strong rollcage and airbags. And even on a car tyre, plugging isn't that simple - there are things that can go wrong if you haven't done it before.
On a bike, my safety is worth considerably more than the cost of a replacement tyre. ...
6
The new tyres would indeed be narrower and slightly taller - the first number is the width in mm, so the second tyre is 10mm (3/8") narrower than the first, and the second is the height as a percentage of the width, which works out at roughly 96mm and 103mm respectively. Just to mix things up even more, the third number is the wheel diameter in inches...
...
6
This looks like damage from being run flat or with very low pressure. If the handbrake turns were all done turning in the same direction and the tire had low air pressure the sidewall would roll and rub in the turn. The damage would be confined to one side. I would replace the tire. The sidewall has damage. Any significent damage to the sidewall is like a ...
6
I can't see any reason why that would be the case. In fact, on a purely theoretical basis, it ought to be the other way round, as a larger tyre would travel further per revolution (as it has a larger circumference), and so would go through less revolutions for a given distance, thus putting less friction on each square inch of rubber per mile.
In reality ...
5
Chances are you have a poor seal between the tyre and the rim. This is normally caused by slight corrosion in the Alloy which then leads to a rough surface which won't seal properly, allowing air to very slowly seep out - It is likely that this won't cause air to escape fast enough to be obvious in a bubble test - after all you're only losing 10psi a ...
5
Bit of background: you can run your tires at various pressures, either under or over the recommendations. Over inflating the tires leads to overwear down the middle of the tire but a nice rigid tire - which is great for track days, smooth roads etc. Under inflating wears the outside edges more, and weakens the sidewalls meaning the tire can move about more - ...
5
It might be worth checking to see if the wear pattern looks odd at all. I've heard that if you're wheel is out of alignment or unbalanced it can cause excessive and distinctive tyre wear. See this page for a fairly comprehensive treatment of tyre wear: http://www.rattlebars.com/tirewear/index.html
Having your suspension set up very hard can make you go ...
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