It’s not an easy thing to prevent tire from untimely wear and destruction. To succeed in it you should be able to define different types of tread wear as well as correctly locate their reasons and eliminate them.
Tread wear reasons can be divided into 2 large categories: there are tires that are worn due to the fact that their life span comes to an end while other tires get worn because of some production defects or mechanical damage caused in the process of exploitation.
Tread wear types are can be different as well and include such variants as edge tread wear, central tread wear, slant one-sided wear, and uneven tread wear.
If you tire shows two-sided edge tread wear the reason for it is under inflation and you should check air pressure in your tire and restore it to its normal value. If the edge wear is one-sided the problem may hide in a wheel camber. Check whether it is so, and if necessary repair or replace your car’s suspension. If it is angular edge wear – drive with a reasonable speed value!
Central tread wear may indicate that your tire is over inflated. So if you had to increase air pressure (for instance when loading your vehicle with heavy cargo or when driving at a high speed) don’t forget to let out air and set a normal pressure.
Slant one-sided tread wear may show that wheel toe-in is incorrect that’s why regulate it on a special stand.
Uneven tread wear is difficult to handle and cure as there can be several reasons for it like erroneous suspension work, unbalanced tires or brake drum ovality. Spot the error and fix you suspension system, balance your wheels, or repair/replace your wheel disks.
Note that while some tires can be repaired the others are beyond any restoration. Furthermore, the tires should not be recapped more than once.
We all know that sooner or later the tire becomes worn, but what influences tread wear most?
1. Firstly, it is over- or underinflated tires. High air pressure causes central tread wear while low pressure is the main reason for shoulder tread wear. In both cases you should set a recommended air pressure value and in case of underinflation check whether the tire was damaged or not.
2. Unbalanced wheels. Unbalance provides for heavy load that causes high tread wear and decreases mileage by 25 per cent. Unbalance may be spotted visually. Its manifestations are uneven tread wear of shoulder and central tread areas, or wear of a separate element of the tread. It affects not only your tire’s mileage btireut also adds noise and reduces driver comfort.
3. Your driving style. Unskillful or careless driving causes untimely tread wear. It includes braking in a skid, dramatic speeding up, driving over obstacles or very close to road curbs. It results in strong tread wear in separate tread areas, cut and chips on tire casing elements, and sidewall abrasion.
4. Incorrect tire mounting and dismantling. Statistics says that it causes 10-15 percent of tire bead damage. It is accompanied by the wrong match of tire and disks sizes, mounting on damaged or rusty disks, violation of mounting rules or the usage of non-standard or defective equipment.
5. Oval shape of a brake drum. It causes uneven braking, which results in intensive abrasion of separate elements of the tread.
6. High positive or negative toe-in angle. Results in worn inner or outer tread areas.
7. Car overload. It includes not only exceeding a car’s loading capacity but also uneven load distribution. In this case tread wear is accompanied by cuts and chips on the tire cord and scales on the tire profile. The tire damage is similar to that caused by low air pressure.
8. Wrong body geometry of your car, for instance, after it had been in a road accident.
These were the main factors that cause untimely tread wear. Minor factors are numerous: bent control arms, weak or worn bearings, steer axle defects, oil leak, etc. That’s why try to fix defects and faults as soon as you notice them to prolong your tire’s life span.
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