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                 BASIC TIRE INFORMATION                   

The three most important components on your automobile are; brakes, steering controls, and tires. In this page I will deal with tire wear and safety.

    I cannot express how important the tires are for your safety and that of others. Inspecting tires should be made into a monthly routine and it only takes 5 or 10 minutes.

     Begin by checking each tire and I don’t mean just giving them a quick eyeball because you will only see the outside edge.  Get down on all fours (you don’t have to bark) and look at the total tire for abnormal tread wear and also look for cuts or gouges in the sidewall. I have shown many people their tires when their auto was on the lift and you could see the steel belts starting to showing through on the inside treads. Their comment was “I just walked around the car and the tires looked good”.  The problem was they only saw the outside treads and this makes for a dangerous situation.

     Now that you think you are done crawling around and all the tires seem to be  in good shape it is time to set the tire pressures to the manufacturer’s  specifications. Use a good quality tire pressure gauge. Once all this is  accomplished you may get up and reward yourself with a doggie treat or  whatever else you prefer.

 Keeping the tires constantly inflated properly, having the wheels aligned and doing tire rotations every 6 to 10 thousand miles will give you maximum tire life.  Remember that the front tires always wear faster due to the stress of steering. This is normal.


When you find that your tires are worn and have to be replaced you can find a large assortment of tires at excellent prices at the link below.  Why pay a large mark-up to a middle man when you can deal directly from this source and save $$$.
 Tire Rack- Revolutionizing Tire Buying

 Below there are drawings of different kinds of tire wear.


     This is a sign of over inflation.  Note how the middle of the tire is worn and  the outside treads are still in good shape.  This means that the tire's middle    treads wore out because the tire only contacted the road in the middle due to  the over inflation.  The tire was too round at the road surface instead of the treads touching across in a straight line.



       Here is a tire which was under inflated.  You can see the inside treads are  still good but both outside treads are worn.  The tire was so badly under    inflated that only the outside treads touched the road.  The middle treads  were not touching  in a straight line due to the fact that they were away from  the road surface folding upwards in a concave type of way.



        This tire has the treads worn in a feather type of wear pattern.  You can  feel this by rubbing your hand across the treads. One direction it feels smooth  and the other way sharp.  A sure sign of toe align wear.  A wheel alignment  will be needed.




                                                               
                                                                  Front of vehicle
                                                                                                       
   left tire                                                                                                       right tire            
    These tires are both worn on the inside.  This is
  an indication of caster and camber wear.  A wheel
  alignment is needed in the very near future.
     

     If  the tires look choppy it may be due to tire balance, bad shock absorbers, or loose components in the front end. Keep in mind that with any unusual tire wear a thorough inspection of the front suspension is necessary to insure there are no loose components.