Tire Maintenance

Changing a flat on the roadside is straightforward if you have practiced once in a driveway first. Before you need it, confirm three things are actually in your vehicle and functional: a spare that holds pressure, a jack, and a lug wrench. Then know the sequence: get safely off the road, loosen lugs before lifting, lift at the correct jacking point, swap the wheel, and torque the lugs in a star pattern.

Tires can lose up to 1 psi every month even with no puncture, so check all four plus the spare once a month or before any long trip. Buy a trusted gauge, check cold before driving or at least three hours after, insert the gauge onto the valve stem, and compare the reading to the psi on the sticker inside your driver's door or in your owner's manual. Never use the sidewall number as your target.

Nothing makes a car look sweeter than a shiny set of tires. But don’t put your investment at risk by using just any cleaner. Make sure to only use acid-free products. A number of wheel cleaners may contain harsh acids, alkalis and/or detergents that can damage wheels and paint. However, there are products out there that are safe for all brands of tires as well as environmentally responsible. You can find them at an auto parts dealer near you.

Balancing compensates for weight variation in the tire and wheel assembly after mounting. A wheel is out of balance when one area is heavier or lighter than the rest, which causes bouncing or wobbling at speed. That vibration decreases treadwear, increases stress on your vehicle, and makes for an unpleasant drive. The fix is straightforward: correction weights are added to counterbalance the assembly.

Alignment is the adjustment of your vehicle's front and rear suspension components, and it has to be correct. If the alignment is off, the vehicle is not safe to drive. Three angles are adjusted: caster, camber, and toe. Misalignment scrubs tread away, pulls the vehicle to one side, and makes steering imprecise. Potholes and rough railroad crossings are the most common causes of alignment drift.

Rotating your tires is not a gimmick. Tires wear at different rates depending on position, and moving them on schedule spreads that wear across all four instead of destroying two. BFGoodrich recommends rotating every 6,000 to 8,000 miles, or 10,000 to 12,000 kilometers, if your owner's manual does not specify a different interval. Rotate immediately at the first sign of irregular wear, even before that mileage.

A monthly inspection takes five minutes and catches almost every problem before it becomes a roadside emergency. Check tread depth with the penny test or a gauge, look for the built-in treadwear indicator bars in the grooves, scan the tread for embedded nails and glass, and examine both sidewalls for cuts, cracks, and bulges. Do this on all four tires and the spare, at multiple points across each tire.