Tire maintenance for motor vehicles is depended on by several factors. The chief cause of tire failure is friction from moving contact with road surfaces, causing the tread on the outer perimeter of tires to eventually wear away. When the tire tread becomes too shallow, the tire is worn out and should be replaced. The same wheels 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, overload or bad wheel alignment.
- Increased wear on a tire facing the outside or the inside of a car: often a sign of bad 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 should 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.
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. See Flat tire for more information.
Read more about Tire Maintenance: Spare Tires, Rotation, See Also
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