One, two, three, four!
Rev up your engines!
It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel.
Today I'm going to help you answer the question, do you really need to buy new tires,
Now unfortunately, you can't just go to a tire store and ask, half the time they are
salesmen, they want to sell you something,
so of course they are going to tell you that you need new tires,
so I'm going to show you how you can check tires out yourself,
and the first thing you need, is a shinny new penny,
simply take the penny upside down and put Lincoln's head in the tire tread,
and as you can see right here, Lincoln's head is pretty well cover up,
now in that case, the tread was about this deep,
which was pretty deep, but if the top of Lincoln's head would have been sticking up,
and it's about that thick, that's about the time you need to get new tires,
and when you do check the tire, you look all around to make sure the whole
tire is deep, because if you have some area that is really
shallow and others are deep, the tire needs to be replaced, and the front
end needs to be checked to see if there is something wearing to make the tire wear unevenly,
now other than just straight wear, your going to look for cracks in the tire,
now this particular tire is about 10 years old,
so it's time for it to be replaced, because it's just getting old and cracking,
and yeah I know, it's my car and my tire, but here's the reason I've left it on,
this old tire, it may be 10 years old, but I never had to add air to it,
I've had to add air to the newer tires, that are only a year old, every once in a while,
but I've never had to add it here, just go to show that they use to make things
better than they do now, and since I drive in the city most of the
time, and only put about 900 miles a year on my car,
I just left it alone, but if I was going to take a big trip like to California or something,
I'd buy a new tire here because I wouldn't want it to blow on the highway from being
cracked and then come apart, so if your like me, and you don't drive that
much and your tires are old, if your tires are 6 or 7 years old,
you might take a look and see if they are cracking,
and if they are, go get a new set of tires, so you don't endanger yourself at highway
speeds, the of course the question arises, if you
need new tires, which tires should you buy,
we as a general rule of thumb, I go to a discount tire store,
and I look at the tires there, never buy the cheapest tires, because they
are often Chinese made one that aren't that good,
so being the cheap guy like I am, I buy the second or third cheapest tire,
and then that perfectly good for what I'm doing, just normal city driving and I don't
put that many miles on them anyways, they dry rot before they wear out,
now if your planning or racing around on a performance car,
you want to get performance tires, you want ones that are stickier,
have more grip, there going to wear out faster, but you need something that can handle higher
speeds, because if your going to be driving well over
100 miles per hour, you want a better rated tire to take that
speed, in that case, you might want a higher performance
tire like this tire, but whatever brand you buy,
I say stay away from Chinese made tires, when this tire was one week old, it got a
hole in it that had to be plugged, and these are Chinese made tires,
they are often just too soft, nails get in, and they easily get punctured,
and years ago, I mistakenly got a set of Chinese tires for my wife's big Toyota Cressida,
if 2 years, they all got ate around, and the car started shaking,
and when I jacked the car up, and spun the tires,
they all had big lumps in them they were so junky,
so stay away from the Chinese tires, and when it comes to maintaining your tires,
there's only one thing you really need to do,
check the air pressure every once in a while, because if your low on air pressure,
not only will you get worse gas mileage, from more rolling resistance,
but your more likely to get punctures on the tire when they have less air pressure in them,
and remember, tires get hot when you drive them,
so the pressure goes up from the heat, so you want to check the pressure in your
tires first thing in the morning, when the tires are cold,
and when the weather changes, like here it just went from 75 to 35, check them when it's
35 because they often need a little extra air then,
so the next time somebody tells you, you need a new set of tires,
check them out first before you give away that money,
and remember if your car has any problems just visit the Scotty Kilmer Channel,
before it's too late