5 Simple Tire Maintenance Tips to Make Your New Tires Last Longer

Your safety depends on your tires, but unless one goes flat, it’s easy to forget about tire maintenance. However, without some attention, you’re not likely to get the life you could otherwise realize.

Your car’s tire maintenance is not difficult, if you only know what you to do. Here’s some information on how long they should last, and what you can do to extend their life.

Tire Maintenance: How Long Should New Tires Last?

Before talking about how to extend their life, it’s important to understand how long they should last. Not all tires are the same, and different models and makes will last more or less than others.

In terms of how long they last, it’s not usually measured in time, but rather in distance. However, time may be a factor around Springfield if your vehicle sits for extended periods without being driven.

For the tire type, you have all-season, all-terrain, and winter models. Generally, all-season models have the longest service life, being rated for anywhere between 50,000 to 70,000 miles. All-terrain models are usually rated for about 40,000 miles due to the addition wear and tear they endure during all-terrain use.

Winter models are a bit different, being you only use them during cold weather. As long as you put them on and take them off at the right time, they should last between four and six seasons. However, if you leave them on during warmer weather, you’ll significantly reduce their life.

All of these ratings are based on maintaining your tires properly. If you ignore them, their service life will be much less. Here’s what you can do to ensure they last the full rated service life, and sometimes more.

Keep Optimal Tire Pressures

One of the most important things you can do is keep an eye on your tire pressures. Tires are made to operate at a specific pressure, and over- or under-inflation causes them to wear oddly and other kinds of damage.

Under-inflation causes excessive flexing in the sidewalls. This makes the tire overheat and wear more rapidly. It also causes problems with braking and steering because there is more friction, causing more wear.

Over-inflation is a problem as well, causing less contact with the ground, leading to uneven wearing at the center of the tire. This can also cause problems with braking and steering, being there is less surface area in contact with the road.

When you look at the sidewall of the tire, you’ll see the maximum pressure for that particular tire. Look at the specifications for your car, and the recommended tire pressures. You can find this on a label, typically on the frame inside one of the doors, on the fuel door, or in the owner’s manual.

Maintain Proper Balance and Alignment

Each wheel needs period balance and alignment checks. When the balance is off, it causes extra vibration, causing additional tire wear. Likewise, improper alignment causes the misaligned tire to wear unevenly, shortening its useful life.

Be sure to have your balance checked when you get rotation service. Plan to have your alignment checked about once a year, or every 12,000 to 15,000 miles.

Fortunately, getting these services is easier than ever with mobile tire service providers, like MTS Express. They bring all the equipment needed right to your home or workplace so that you don’t have to disrupt your daily routine to get these important maintenance tasks completed.

Practice Good Driving Habits

How you drive has a major impact on how your tires wear, so better driving habits results in longer tire life. Start by watching the road carefully, and avoiding roadway hazards like potholes and roadkill. Both of these can damage your tire, causing an immediate failure. Use caution with how close you get to curbs. Continually rubbing the curb, such as through a drive-thru, damages the sidewall, eventually wearing through the tire.

Likewise, be careful of how you accelerate and stop. While seeing a car spin out and smoke is fun to see on television, doing so cuts deeply into your tire’s service life. Starting and stopping more gently will extend both your tire life and that of your brakes and transmission.

Monitor Your Tread Wear

You may not think about monitoring your tire tread until it starts getting near time for a replacement. However, regularly monitoring your tire tread will help you identify uneven wearing, such as feathering, cupping, or distortion. The faster you identify there’s a problem and fix it, the less damage it’ll cause your affected tire, and the less it’ll affect the tire’s service life.

Rotate As Recommended by the Manufacturer

Each tire wears a little differently based on which wheel position it’s in, which is why both automobile and tire manufacturers recommend rotating your tires. This helps even out the wear so that you don’t have one tire that wears more than the others. Plan to have rotation service about every six months, or every 5,000 to 6,000 miles.

Don’t waste your time going to a brick and mortar tire shop for your routine maintenance. Let the technicians at MTS Express bring the shop to your home or workplace around Springfield.