The Tyre Life and Age can be influenced by many factors:
All Tyres have been designed and manufactured to meet a variety of criteria. From long life tyres which are constructed in a harder compound and may be noisier due to this. Other tyres are made in a softer compound and have less road noise yet can wear at a quicker rate. You will quite often find that a cars original tyres last longer than subsequent tyres after replacement.
The life of your Tyre is influenced by a number of factors:
- Your driving style has a major influence on the wear and tear of your tyres, so driving aggressively around corners and braking suddenly will surely speed up the wear of your tyres.
- The tyre position. As your front tyres move when you steer these are the tyres that will wear first, we always advise our customers to have their car moving even slightly before steering as this reduces wear of your front tyres.
- The speed you travel in general has an impact on the wear of your tyres, why? The faster you drive, the higher the temperature becomes on your tyre due to traction and hence the quicker the wear, so chill out and drive a little slower.
- The amount of weight you carry in your car, we advised in an earlier post to de clutter your car as it increases the amount of fuel you use, likewise the heavier the load you are carrying, the faster the wear of your tyres.
- The pressure of your tyres also impacts on wear, this includes both over and under inflation, so the key is to get it ‘just right’.
- Alignment of tyres is very important, where incorrect alignment is present you get costly results of rapid and uneven wear across your tyres.
We reckon that in general you should get a minimum of 20,000 miles for front tyres on a front-wheel-drive car and you can double that for the rear tyres. This is only if you follow the 6 points above. In Ireland the minimum limit for tyre depth is 1.6mm, the reason for this is due to the wet driving conditions here. And in the conditions tyre performance is reduced as tyre depth wears down. We give general advice to our customers to check tyre depth regularly especially when lower than 3mm and get replacement tyres when they go lower than 2mm, especially heading into the autumn and winter months.
Tyre age
This is a separate issue to tyre wear and tyres generally deteriorate due to a variety of environmental factors. Such as exposure to sunlight, heat, light and rain. Your tyres will degrade depending on their exposure to the above. For caravan owners, trailers and vehicles that are not used frequently these deteriorations are more problematic. However, on vehicles that are used daily it is wear that usually requires a tyre change ahead of age. If you have tyres with cracking on them we strongly urge you to replace them irrespective of age or wear. Call into any of our 6 friendly tyre depots and get a quick check on your tyres, you will be amazed by the warm and friendly service provided by our team of dedicated tyre specialists.
