Do You Need New Tires?

Do You Need New Tires?

Right off the bat, we need to make it clear that eventually tires wear out and need to be replaced. But how can you know if you need new ones without having to take your vehicle to a mechanic? Let’s cover this matter, shall we?

You can take as a guideline a period of five years, after which you will need to have them inspected at least once a year. Also, you cannot solely base the change of your tires on how much time has gone by, since the wear depends a lot on your driving habits and the maintenance you have provided to the tires while they were in use. If you do not know how you can check the manufacturing date of the tires here is how:

- Find the date on the tires, usually, it is a number of four digits, where the first two stand for the week and the last two for the year. An example would be 1215, which respectively means that they were manufactured in the 12th week of 2015.

Since we said that time cannot always determine the need of change you can perform the penny and/or quarter test on the tires in order to check the wear of the tread. You take a quarter and insert it into the tread in the center of the tire, Washington’s head has to point towards the tire, if the top of the head is even with the tread you can safely drive with the tires, but you should go tire shopping soon. The penny test is more or less the same, place the penny the same way you did the quarter, and if the tread is even with the top of Lincoln’s head you will need to replace the tires as soon as possible because they are getting unsafe for driving.

If for any reason you do not feel completely certain about checking yourself, you can take your vehicle to an auto repair facility where the mechanics will be able to determine for you. Ideally, you can choose an auto service center where tires are sold, so if you need new ones you can act immediately, without having to risk driving with unsafe tires.