Take care of your tyres

A tyre is the outer part of the wheel. It has basically two functions, one is to ensure that there is enough friction or traction between the vehicle and the road surface; the second is to be absorbing shocks. The second has been taken more over by shock absorbers that are mounted separately, but still it is important for ensuring a smooth ride. Initially the tire was just a leather, iron or metal band around a wooden wheel. This was just to prevent too much wear of the wood. Later came rubber, which then developed into pneumatic tyres by Dunlop in 1887.With the developments of vulcanization and synthetic rubber, the development has progressed to today’s tyres. Today there are almost 2 billion tyres produced in several hundred different tyre factories around the world.

The tyres that are made today are extremely durably and will last you for several years, especially if maintained correctly. For ensuring that the tyres last longer, you have to ensure that you have optimal wheel alignment, that your tyres have the correct air pressure and finally that the suspension is in good condition. The easiest to check is of course the tyre pressure. Tyres do degrade by time, as the ultraviolet radiation breaks down the polymer chains, causing the performance to deteriorate over time. So one should try to make sure that the tyres are bought are produced within the last 2 years at least. Some reports show that after 6 years, there can be signs and most probably tyres that were produced more than 10 years ago, should probably be exchanged. This is of course not in the interest of the tyre manufacturers, as that puts limits on their supply chain. But if you are anyways paying for new tyres, you might as well get new freshly produced ones versus tyres that have been lying on the shelf for years. The degradation is more predominant in warm and sunny countries, than cold countries, so there it is more important to check the dates. Your tyres will treat you good if you are good to them and they are a very important safety feature on your car.

Today there are almost 2 billion tyres produced in several hundred different tyre factories around the world.