What is tire as a service?

Tire Service Doesn’t Have to be Complicated

Explanation of Tire Service Basics

Taking the time to take care of your car can be time-consuming, but it’s essential to keep costs down, keep you safe, and get the most out of your vehicle for thousands of miles to come. Tire service is one of the basic ways to ensure adequate care for your car. But what are all of the aspects involved in routine tire maintenance? Let’s take a look.

If the tires on your vehicle are beginning to show signs of wear and tear and you need to schedule a tire service appointment, contact Campus Automotive in Blacksburg, Virginia today.

Balancing

Tire balancing calculates the distribution of weight across your tires and is recommended every 3,000 to 6,000 miles. Balancing a tire is carried out by using counterweights to restore even the vehicle’s distribution of weight. If you find that any of your tires are out of alignment, it could mean that one or more of your tires holds more or less weight than the others.

Wheel Alignment

Proper wheel alignment is an important secret to prolonging the life of your tires and vehicle. If your car’s alignment is incorrect, it can cause your tires to wear unevenly, and you may encounter problems with handling such as pulling or abnormal vibration. Consider a wheel alignment if there is strange tire wear or if your car is significantly pulling to one side or the other.

Tire Pressure Check

Good tire inflation is critical to overall tire efficiency and vehicle performance. Maintaining the correct inflation pressure helps the tire to work the way it should and provides added comfort, fuel economy, stopping distance, and traction.

Tire Rotation

Periodically rotating your vehicle’s tires helps keep the tires last longer and prevent uneven tire wear. Several things can contribute to uneven wear, such as worn suspension sections, unbalanced wheels, and incorrect alignment. It’s necessary to rotate your tires according to the correct tire rotation pattern as it can significantly extend the life of your tires and reduce the chance of sudden tire failure.

Schedule Your Tire Service Appointment Today

If your vehicle is showing any signs of needing tire service, it may be time to schedule an appointment to have a professional mechanic take a look. Contact Campus Automotive today to have one of our qualified technicians conduct a thorough tire inspection to determine the strength of your tires. We are conveniently located in Blacksburg, Virginia, for all of your tire service needs, so give us a call today.

Inspection and maintenance of tires is about inspecting for wear and damage on tires so that adjustments or measures can be made to take better care of the tires so that they last longer, or to detect or predict if repairs or replacement of the tires becomes necessary. Tire maintenance for motor vehicles is based on several factors. The chief reason for tire replacement is friction from moving contact with road surfaces, causing the tread on the outer perimeter of tires to eventually wear away. When the tread depth becomes too shallow, like for example below 3.2 mm (4/32 in), the tire is worn out and should be replaced. The same rims can usually be used throughout the lifetime of the car. Other problems encountered in tire maintenance include:

• Uneven or accelerated tire wear: can be caused by under-inflation, overloading or poor wheel alignment.
• Increased tread wear on only one side of a tire: often a sign of poor wheel alignment.
• Tread worn away completely: especially when the wear on the outer rubber exposes the reinforcing threads within, the tire is said to be bald and must be replaced as soon as possible. Sometimes tires with worn tread are recapped, i.e. a new layer of rubber with grooves is bonded onto the outer perimeter of a worn tire. Since this bonding may occasionally come loose, new tires are considered superior to recapped ones.

This tire has been punctured by a screw.

Finding a leak with soapy water

Sometimes a pneumatic tire gets a hole or a leak through which the air inside leaks out resulting in a flat tire, a condition which must be fixed before the car can be driven safely.

Spare tires

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Vehicles typically carry a spare tire, already mounted on a wheel rim, to be used in the event of a flat tire or blowout. Spare tires (sometimes called "doughnuts") for modern cars are smaller than regular tires (to save trunk space, weight and cost) and should not be used to drive very far before replacement with a full-size tire. A few vehicle models use conventional size spare tires. Jacks and lug wrenches for emergency replacement of a flat tire with a spare are included with a new car. Not included, but available separately, are hand or foot pumps (like a bicycle pump) for filling a tire with air by the vehicle owner. Cans of pressurized air can sometimes be bought separately for convenient emergency refill of a tire.

Some cars and trucks are equipped with run flat tires that may be driven with a puncture over a distance of 80 km to 100 km. This eliminates the need for an immediate stop and tire change or calling for roadside assistance.

Racing tires

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On dry surfaces, tires have more traction when they are bald, because there is more surface area making contact with the road. The reason regular tires have treads is to avoid hydroplaning when the surface of the road is wet. Therefore racing cars competing in dry conditions characteristically use tires without treads, often known as slicks. For example stock cars driven on professionally maintained NASCAR tracks use tires without treads, and with a thicker layer of rubber.

Rotation

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Front tires, especially on front wheel drive vehicles, have a tendency to wear out more quickly than rear tires. Routine maintenance including tire rotation (exchanging the front and rear tires with each other) is often done periodically to facilitate uniform tire wear.[1]

Inflation (adding air)

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There are simple hand-held tire-pressure gauges which can be temporarily attached to the valve stem to check a tire's interior air pressure. This measurement of tire inflation pressure should be made at least once a month. Since heat in the tires from driving can impact the temperature a lot, accurate readings can only be obtained when the tires are cold - that is at least three hours after the vehicle has been driven or driven less than 1 km (1/2 mi) since cold - tire pressures will not then be higher because of operating heat.[2] The recommended inflation pressure is found in the owner's manual and on the vehicle's tire placard.[3][4] Because of slow air leaks, changes in the weather and ambient temperature or other conditions, tire pressure will occasionally have to be corrected via the valve stem with compressed air which is often available at service stations.

Under-inflation of tires can cause premature and uneven tire wear, excess fuel usage, and carries an increased risk of explosive failure (blowout) especially after prolonged high speed operation at high temperatures. Overall, these factors decrease the life of a tire by up to 20%.[5] Many vehicles have tire pressure monitoring systems; older cars are usually equipped with indirect monitoring systems while later cars are typically equipped with direct tire pressure monitoring systems.

Tire safety

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It is extremely important for owners to have an understanding of what is safe and what is not when it comes to their tires. The three major areas to keep an eye on is the tread, sidewall, and air pressure of the tire. Having the correct air pressure in your vehicle's tires lets your vehicle perform in the most efficient way possible. When objects such as a screw or nail puncture a tire, it creates a small leak in the tire. This leads to under-inflation of the tire. When a tire is under-inflated, it causes the inside of the tire to heat up. This heat compromises the internal structure of the tire which can lead to a blowout. When a tire is over-inflated, it wears the tread down faster, and becomes more prone to catching nails or screws in the tire. The best way to check tire maintenance is to check the air pressure, because that will lead you to whatever problem your tire might have. There are several factors that may cause quicker tire wear, among them there are heavy braking and fast cornering, constant heavy cargo transportation and rough roads, improper pressure (under- or overinflation) or improper maintenance.[clarification needed] That's why for the older vehicles, that do not come equipped with TPMS sensors, it is highly recommended to check tire pressure at least once a month (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommendation).[6]

See also

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References

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