Rev up your engines, today I'm going to give you some life hacks
to make your car's tires last as long as possible, now the first thing to check is crazy as it
might seem is your shock absorbers or struts on your car, go to each corner of the car,
this shouldn't bounce much, as you can see it hardly bounces at all, both front sides
are pretty stiff and so are the back ones you can see, it hardly bounces at all it's
nice and stiff, I got some racing ones on this so it will be a lot stiffer than most
cars, but even on this matrix with stock struts you can see it doesn't bounce much, you can
also pull off the wheels and if you see the rod is all coated with oil dripping down you'll
know the seals are gone and you need new shocks and struts, now this is important for your
tire life for 2 reasons, one as nutty as it sounds, you tires actually absorb a lot of
the shock of the car, when you hit bumps the rubber goes in the air and it absorbs a lot
of the shocks, so if your shocks aren't working right then your tires are going to have to
absorb more of the shock and it's going to wear them out faster,
and the other reason is because the shock absorbers hold the tires in the correct position
while you drive down the road, if your shock absorbers are all worn out, your tires are
going to bounce around too much and guess what, when they bounce around and their not
sitting right, then they'll wear on one edge or the other, so you want to make sure you
got good shocks and struts first, now the next thing to do is to check the suspension
itself, jack the car up, get it so the wheel comes off the ground, then once it's off the
ground grab it at 3 and 9 oclock and pull on the tire, it shouldn't have any play, if
it has play and goes back and forth, often that's a worn tie rod, you'd have to fix that
because if the tie rod is worn the tire is going to wiggle back and forth too much and
it's going to wear out early, then check it and 6 and 12 oclock to see if it's got any
play there, if it's got play there then odds are your
ball joints are worn, and any front end part that's worn that makes the car sit wrong and
then when you hit bumps or corner and make it wobble, it's going to wear your tire out
faster, and of course you want to do this checking on all 4 wheels, and if you find
that it has play the whole way around at any angle that means your wheel bearings are worn
and when that's worn your tire wobbles and it will wear out faster, now the next thing
to do to make your tires last as long as possible is to check the tire pressure, now tire pressure
of course is very important for long life of your tire, you want to have to correct
pressure at all times, and people are always asking me, scotty what pressure should I put
in my tires, well their always rated but if you look on your door there's a suggestion,
and the best thing is kind of in between what they say, if it says 30-35, 32-33 is perfectly
fine, you don't want to go by the maximum tire pressure allowed on the tire because
the more pressure you put in the tire the middle will stick out slightly and the middle
will wear out, and also if you have low pressure then the edges will stick out more and the
middle will sit in and it will wear on the edges, so make sure you check your tire pressure
every so often, these gauges only cost a few bucks and you
can get a decent air compressor to put in your trunk that plugs into the cigarette lighter
for $30-40, don't depend on the stuff at the gas station these days, half the time they
don't work and even when they do work they often give you the wrong pressure, I did that
once when I was on vacation in a rental car, and I put what I thought was 32 psi in it
and it turns out the tire had 52 psi when I went to a store and actually bought a gauge
just to see what it was, because in this self serving age, be ready
to serve yourself, prepare yourself with a little pump in the trunk and a good gauge
that you can just stick in the glove box, and when you do check the tire pressure do
it first thing in the morning when it's cold, because guess what you drive down the road,
touch your tires after you take a trip, the get pretty warm, that increases the pressure
and you get a false reading, you want to do it when the tires are cold
first thing in the morning, another reason you want a good gauge and a pump yourself
is because by the time you drive to a gas station the tires have already heated up and
you'll get a false high reading, now the next thing to do to make your tires
last as long as possible is drive them quite a bit, I know it sounds crazy but if you don't
use they sit and the dry rot, if you got older tires on your car and say their 5,6,7 years
or older and you see a bunch of cracks on them hey it's time for new tires, their not
safe anymore, the do rot when you don't use them, so in the case of if you don't use it
you lose it, that's really true about tires, I remember years ago when my wife had a toyota
cressida, I bought it used but they had all cracks in them even though 90% of the tread
was still there, I measured it with my tread gauge and it still had 90% of the tread but
they were no good anymore because they had rotted, so in the case of tires your better
off using them all the time, don't save them up because if you don't use them much their
going to dry rot anyways and you're going to have to get new tires, with all my tires
on all my cars I end up replacing them and usually the have 60-70% of the tread left
but their all cracking, but here's a warning if you think your going
to stop the cracks, guys will put that tire dressing on to make them look shinny and stuff,
it really doesn't fix your problem at all, because the tread itself, the part your driving
on, that's still going to crack and you can't spray all that stuff on the tread because
if you do that stuff is really slippery and it will make your tires dangerous, I remember
when I was young I was dumb enough to try that one time on a motorcycle, and if you
notice on a motorcycle the tread goes a long way to the side, I got it too far on the side
and when I cornered it started to slide and I almost lost it, and many cars have pretty
wide treads on them these days, you don't want to put that tire dressing on them and
make them slippery, their not going to handle as well or even brake as well if you get some
on the tread itself, so although spraying that stuff on the tires makes them look shinny
and everything, it doesn't make them last longer and it actually makes them slightly
more dangerous if your a fast driver and corner fast a lot, so now you know some hacks to
keep your tires lasting as long as possible, stuff you can do yourself, tires aren't cheap
you want them to last as long as they possibly can and now you know how to do it yourself,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!