5 Tips to Keep Your Tires Healthy

Too many drivers fail to do one simple task every month through which travel risks can be reduced and also help our nation conserves valuable natural resources.

There is a lot to learn about tire safety. In a Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) survey it has been proved that 85% of the motorists do not even know how to properly inflate their tires.

Follow our tire-safety checklist to make sure AAA doesn't have to come to your rescue.

1. Check Tire Pressure :

Check the pressure on all tires, including the spare at least once in two weeks. Inflate the tires to the recommended tire pressure and not to the maximum pressure.

An underinflated tire doesn’t roll as easily and the increased rolling resistance requires more energy by robbing the vehicle’s fuel efficiency when compared with the inflated tire.


According to the U.S. Department of Energy “Optimal inflation can improve fuel economy by 3.3 percent”



2. Rotate your tires:  

This should be done for every 6,000 to 8,000 miles. On front-wheel-drive cars, the front wheels wear almost twice the rate of the rear wheels whereas in left-hand-drive countries, the left tire may wear faster than the right; hence keep an eye out for that.

Regularly rotating tires helps you to achieve more uniform wear through a constant performance and a longer tire life.  By using a hydraulic floor jack you can do this by yourself.

3. Examine your treads: 

The new information from tirerack.com shows that in the test they conducted, tires with

1. 10/32 inch depth took 195.2 feet to stop to rain
2. 4/32 inch depth took 290 feet to stop to rain
3. 2/32 inch depth took 378.8 feet to stop to rain

To make sure your tread depth, place a coin into one of the tire-tread grooves; if any part of the coin is obscured, your tire haves that amount of tread depth.



4. Align your wheels:

RMA says that improperly aligned and misaligned wheels can create rapid, steering and tracking problems.

Make sure that the wheels are perpendicular to the ground and are parallel to each other.

5. Keep the deepest treads in the rear:

Since the front tires do the braking and steering, don’t take any risk on the front wheels.

Deeper treads grip the road by making the car less likely to hydroplane and fishtail.