Tires! Know them well #2

Hello there, it's been a while since my last post of automotive related post apart from the Christmas Season posting 😅. If you missed out my last post knowing your tires well, you can read it through here. Let's get this started, shall we?

Continental Max Contact MC6. Source

The last post, I've talked about the how to read tire sizes, speed rating, load rating and tread wear indicator; this post I'll be talking about how to read the tire's age, when will you need to replace your tires even the tread is still deep and the use of spare tires.

Tire's Age and When to Replace Them?

Every tire on the road has their age whether is a passenger car tires, commercial truck tires or even aircraft tires. Why do we even need to read their age? Well mainly because everything will have an expiry date which does not exclude tires as well. The materials that made the tires will lose their strength after a certain amount of time and environment impact the ageing as well.

According to car manufacturers like Nissan and Mercedes Benz, it is recommended to replace their tires after 6 years of their production date regardless how much tread life you still have whereas tire manufacturers such as Continental and Michelin said that tires are able to last 10 years provided you do your annual tire inspection after 5th year of the production date.

Hence why that nowadays some tires manufacturer provide 5 years of tire warranty starting the day you purchased rather than following the old warranty which starts from the production date of a tire. Now how to read them?

Example of a tires sidewall, find the 4 digit number. Source

From the image above, 5107 is the 4 digit number that we're looking for and the first two digit is known as the week and the last two digit is known as the year. Hence, this tire is manufactured on the week 51 of year 2007. All tires manufactured are required to embed the production date on the sidewall of the tires as required by law if you can't find them on the sidewall, you can refuse the tires and get another tire brand.

Spare Tires

Ahhh the lifesaver of all driver's nightmare (flat or blown out tires) but easier forgotten to be taken care of! Spare tires given by car manufacturer comes in two different types, one is known as space saver(SS) spare tires and another is known as full-size (FS) spare tires. Usually, space saver spare tires as the name said it, save space are given to smaller segment A & B cars whereas segment C, D, SUV and 4x4 cars get full-size spare tires.

Space Saving Spare Tires. Source

Full Size Spare Tires. Source

Different between SS & FS is that SS is designed for temporary use only, it doesn't have the same capability of load capacity, speed capabilities, as well as traction. It only buys you time to look for a tire shop and get your replacement as soon as possible. FS in another way is opposite, well it's your normal tire that comes with your car as standard so that you do not worry about the distance and speed.

A lot of people do not know the SS tires capability and ignore the fact is not meant to be driven like normal tires which ends up another flat or blown out tire and needed to call the tow-truck to assist.

Flat Spare Tires. Source

On top of the first nightmare comes another nightmare which is flat spare tires. Why? Because someone didn't keep check of their spare tire from time to time. There's a tire pressure recommendation by manufacturer usually printed on the side of driver's door or behind the fuel cover, on that it's always recommended to pump in more than the standard rate. Why?

The fact is that we, human sometimes is just too lazy and forgetful to check it from time to time and the air within the spare tires will also leak out over a long time period slowly. So the next time you visit your service workshop or tire shop, ask them to check your spare tires too. Just a friendly reminder to my readers out there 😆

Stay tuned for my upcoming post about tires! I'll do my best to explain it all and make it easily understandable if you have any question, feel free to comment down below 😊

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