Over and above your vehicle's passive and active safety features, tyres are one of the single most important safety features of your vehicle.
Here are a few tips on how to care for your tyres.
Tyre Pressure
- Refer to your car owners manual / sticker inside the door for the recommended tyre pressure.
- Always check your tyre pressures when the tyres are still cold.
- Adjust pressure according to manufacturer specifications for different driving conditions.
- Over or under inflating a tyre can cause handling issues and premature tyre wear, even blowouts when over inflated.
- Underinflation can cause higher fuel consumption, between 1.5% and 2% more.
Balancing and Alignment
- Balancing and alignment should be done around every 10,000km or even sooner depending on driving conditions.
- Hitting potholes can also cause balancing and alignment issues and you should get your tyres and alignment checked out as soon as possible.
- Incorrect alignment can cause premature tyre wear, handling issues and causes unnecessary strain on your car
- Tyres which are not balanced or not properly balanced can also cause handling issues as well as strain on your suspension components, more specifically the shock absorbers.
Tyres Age
Believe it or not your tyres have a lifespan and can degrade over time, even if you don’t drive many kilometers. Five years are normally the time you need to replace your tyres as they start to degrade and can potentially burst.
On the side walls of your tyres you will normally find a code indication your tyre’s age, for example 2616
The first two digits, in this instance 26 indicates the week in which the tyre were manufactured.
The last two digits indicates the year it was manufactured in this instance 16.
For this example, the tyre was manufactured in the 26th week of 2016
Lastly, keep your tyres clean, a clean car does not look that great with dirty tyres and wheels.
