Do you always seem to end up buying tires more often than you should? Are you always worried about snow and rain because your treads keep wearing thin and leaving you without any grip? Your tires should last between five to 10 years depending on how you drive, where you live, and whether you park inside or outside, but the treads can wear down faster if you don’t avoid bad habits or ignore problems for too long.
Poor Inflation
Over-inflated tires bulge out at the center, putting more pressure on that part of the tread and causing it to wear down quickly. The same thing is true about under-inflated tires and the sides of the tread. Every tire constantly leaks a little air every day as the inside tries to equalize with the air pressure outside, and that’s why you need to refill your tires every few months to keep it at the right psi. Keeping the air pressure up will keep your tires from wearing out too quickly.
Poor Wheel Alignment
It’s surprising just how precise you need to align your tires to make sure they’re as efficient as possible. When a tire is slightly misaligned it will try to move in the wrong direction, and the fact that it can’t makes the tire scrape along just a little as the vehicle above it forces the tire to move in the right direction.
Unfortunately, a perfect alignment doesn’t stay perfect forever, either. Every bump in the road, every pothole, gravel road, and bridge bumps your tires and pushes them against the suspension that holds them in place. Since not every tire goes through the same experience and only two of them can steer, your tires will eventually come out of alignment and start wearing down faster. It’s not by much if you realign your tires regularly, but if you don’t then the wearing will get worse the longer you wait.
Bad Suspension
Sometimes the problem can be with the tires’ connection to the car and not the tires themselves. If part of the suspension is broken or worn, it can cause a wheel to bounce too much and wear the treads down faster or keep one of the front wheels from turning far enough and end up scraping along the ground like it was out of alignment. This is also the most serious potential problem because a worn suspension strut could snap and leave you one wheel short of a functioning car.
Other factors can also contribute to worn-down tires, like braking and accelerating too aggressively or driving too fast on the highway: hot tires leave more of their treads behind. You might also be buying tires with softer treads than normal, and softer tires wear down faster than tires made of harder materials. The miles you drive are also a part of the equation, so if you have a high-mileage job your tires won’t last nearly as long. No matter what, there’s always a reason, so if you’re worried about replacement costs you should figure out what that reason is.
Image “tires” by Dean Hochman, used under CC BY 2.0
Connect with us
