Handy Tips to Take Care of Your Car Tyres

Well, we don’t often check the tyres of our cars, but remember tyres are the four vital points of contact between our vehicle and the road. Thus, it’s paramount to take good care of them, as they keep the vehicle and everybody inside it safe and sound, as well as, keep other road users safe with whom, you share the road.

Here are handy tips to inspect and maintain your car tyres:

1. Valves and Caps

The small plastic or metal caps fitted on your car tyres are vital to keeping any foreign substance or water out of your tyres. When checking your vehicle tyres, always ensure that each tyre valve has a cap on it. If you’re missing one of them, speak to your vehicle maker or visit your favourite auto parts shop to buy a new one.

2. Use a Torch

Always use a torch when checking your tyres for any damage. This way, it’s far easier to identify rough wear and road rubble that is harming your vehicle tyres. Using a torch, you’ll also be able to look around the tread beneath the wheel arch effortlessly instead of just the front-facing sidewall.

3. Examining Tread Depth

It requires having a minimum 1.5mm of tread depth across the tyre for a vehicle to be considered roadworthy. Nonetheless, once a tyre attains 3mm of tread depth, which is double the legal limit, its wet weather and braking performance is drastically lowered. Thus, get hold of your ruler and inspect your car tyre’s tread depth or look for the raised tyre wear indicators that signal when a tyre has attained its utmost mileage and need to be replaced.

4. Look for Leaks

Well, most of the slow leaks will go ignored and the simplest way to identify a leak is by using soapy water. It’s easy to do this – just mix dishwashing or your car wash detergent with little warm water. Next, dispense some of your soapy water mix over each area of the car tyre. To rotate tyres around to check them thoroughly, you may require driving your car forwards or backwards a few metres. If an area begins to bubble then it signals a leak. Besides road rubble causing punctures, the tread of your vehicle tyre cracking because of old age is another ordinary cause for leaks. Once you spot a leak, immediately switch to your spare wheel and take the wheel having tyre puncture to your local tyre shop in Sydney to get it repaired.

5. Free Air

It’s significant to keep the right amount of air in your car tyres, as all tyres gradually deflate eventually. Thus, set yourself a reminder to inspect your tyre’s air pressure at least once a month. Tyre pressure should be ideally checked when they are cold using a tyre pressure gauge. Nonetheless, you can head to your local service station or tyre shop to use their free compressed air, which most of us do, isn’t it?

6. Right Tyre Pressure

It is recommended to stick to the recommended tyre pressure if you’re using your vehicle for a daily commute or general driving. Nonetheless, you’ll need to adjust your tyre pressures if you’re using your vehicle for high-performance driving or off-roading or to carry heavy loads.

• Based on the conditions you’ll be dealing with, off-roading will need different tyre pressures – for instance, sand driving requires a far lower pressure than rock crawling.
• High-performance driving will need a somewhat lower tyre pressure because the tyre will heat up and thus, the air inside too will also heat up more compared to normal driving.
• As the load increase, transport vehicles will require increasing their tyre pressure.

7. Cleaning is Significant

When you keep your tyres clean, it’s easier to check them regularly. Always make it a point to give a quick scrub to your car tyres at the end when washing your car. Once the tyres are dry, it’ll be simpler to find damage and uneven wear when you don’t have to rub off the mud and/ or road dust from them. Applying some tyre gel or shine to them will make them to a near-showroom condition.

The Bottom Line

Following these handy tips, you’re better equipped to take care of your car tyres. However, if you’re not sure whether your car tyre has a leak or want to talk to an expert professional about your tyres, then contact Eagle Tyres - local tyre shop in Sydney.