Tires are determinant components of a smooth and safe ride. They assist you in accurate steering, and they slow or stop your vehicle quickly. It is is necessary to inspect your tires for unusual and uneven tread wear regularly; this will alert you of problems that could lead to an accident causing a blowout.
Unusual and uneven wear on tires negatively impacts tire longevity and performance, when it is even noticeable; it affects your safety, vehicle handling, and potentially reduces fuel efficiency. Early detection and corrective action become essential.
Normally tires become even shallower and your tire (capability) performance changes as the tires age. The appropriate, and potentially inappropriate, or unusual wear will happen for several reasons and may leave you with no choice but to say goodbye to your tire sooner than you want.
Regularly having all four tires inspected for tread depth tells the owner of his or her tires and when they need to be replaced; additionally, it helps with the discovery of other vehicle components that may need maintenance. This helps you and your vehicle get the most out of your tires and/or vehicle.
Tire Wear Matters
Driving with too little tread will lead to unsafe situations. If tires lose their grip on the surface, the driver may lose control of the vehicle.
Tread depth is even more important when driving over wet roads or snowy roads. If there is precipitation present between the tires and the road, the driver needs their tire’s tread to cut through the water or snow to try and maintain contact with the surface of the road.
With a shallow tread, it is even easier to lose traction on a wet or snowy surface. The more that you are driving in those conditions, the more you should also be concerned with slowing down, and maintaining traction.
What Are Tread Wear Indicators?
Tread wear indicators are also referred to as wear bars or tire tread depth indicators. Wear bars are situated at intervals throughout the cruising grooves in the tire tread. If you run your finger horizontally across the tire wear bars and feel the wear bar even with the level of the tread, it is time to replace your tires.
The purpose of the wear bars is to give you a visual indication of how much tread is on your tires.
Tire tread is responsible for stabilizing your car in wet conditions, helping with traction and handling, improving cornering. Without your tires having tread, you can quickly find yourself spinning out of control! That is why it’s so important to monitor your tire’s wear bars.
When the tire tread wears to the level of the wear bars, its time to replace your tires. You have reached the legal limit of tire tread depth, and those tires are no longer considered safe to use. Most manufacturers may suggest replacing tires sooner than this to try to keep you as safe as possible on the road.
There are many ways to monitor the condition of your tread, such as running your finger horizontally over the tire wear bars. If you feel the wear bar against your finger as easily as the tread has worn, it is time for new tires.
In the United States, the legal minimum is 2/32 of an inch (or about 1.6mm). Driving on tires worn beyond this point can decrease traction, especially in wet conditions, and increase the likelihood of motor vehicle accidents.
The Different Tire Wear Types
One-Sided Wear
Causes:
Incorrect Wheel Alignment
The way your wheel is aligned is just as important as pressure in making sure your tires perform well and last longer. This is why manufacturers provide recommendations on steering and suspension settings, so the wheels sit proper. One sided wear occurs when the top of the tire moves away from or toward your car.
When the car is new the settings are right on, for steering and suspension settings, but as you drive over potholes, hit big bumps and just wear things out the settings can be thrown out of whack.
The street feel will start to feel different or the car will pull to one side or another. Alignment problems come from uneven tread wear, the usual suspects being toe and camber here.
Tires that have excessive toe-in, point way too much towards the center of the car from bird’s eye view. This is going to cause the scuffing on the outside edge of tire tread which could cause tread blocks to look like the teeth of a saw blade.
Mechanical parts
Bent or damaged front-end parts should also be considered when trying to explain uneven outside wear, think ball joints and tie rods.
Effects on Vehicle Performance: One sided wear shortens your tires life and decreases response time in steering.
The Solution: You can have your vehicle serviced from tire professionals and get a wheel alignment. They will be able to determine what the issue is with your suspension system and at that time make sure your car is even straight and your wheels are parallel.
Wear on Both Sides
Cause: Tire wear on both sides is caused by under-inflated tires. Under-inflation causes the road to contact predominantly on the outer edges of the tire.
Effects on Vehicle Performance: This type of tire wear can reduce tire wear by 15 percent or more. This type of wear will also reduce fuel economy by as much as 15 percent. This is because your engine has to work harder to get the vehicle to run with under-inflated tires.
The Solution: Tire pressures should correspond with the recommendations of the manufacturer, so make sure they are properly inflated. Check tire pressures regularly with a tire pressure gauge, and do this engine cold, in the morning.
The Center Wear
Cause: Overinflated tires are the common cause of you seeing wear only at the center. By having excessive air, it causes the middle of the tire to bulge which creates increased road contact. This limits the contact area because you have a fraction of the rubber contacting the asphalt causing traction problems.
Effects on Vehicle Performance: Center Wear is excessively bad for tire wear. It also creates braking and traction problems and makes you more apt to experience a blowout since bald strips cannot cool and dissipate heat.
The Solution: Decrease air pressure until the tire’s recommended PSI is achieved. The recommended PSI is either located in your owner’s manual or located on the sticker in your door jamb.
The max press number you see on the sidewall of the tire is maximum not optimum for good traction while on the road daily. It is suggested you carry out these checks on your tires with cold tires before first driving your vehicle.
There’s a false claim that inflating tires will decrease rolling resistance for improved economy. For all the fuel saved, you will still spend much more on your tires that wear prematurely.
If you see center wear on your tires but measurement show tires are correct, you may have a mismatch between wheel and tire set up.
The Unusual Wear
Cause: An issue with mechanical parts may cause spotting, feathering or scalloped (independent) tire wear because the tire is not tracking straight. Several things may be causing the unusual tread wear such as worn suspension component(s), loose wheel bearings, aggressive braking, imbalance, or mis-mounted wheels.
Scalloping/Feathering: This is the manner in which all the tread blocks on one shoulder have developed a wear pattern where one block edge is higher than the other, which in turn leaves raised edges on the leading or trailing edge of each block, respectively.
If you run your fingers very lightly along the tread blocks over the raised edges, you will feel an unmistakable flutter. One of the early indications of this is usually a change in your vehicle’s tire noise that is unpleasant.
What it sounds like is a loud growl as the edges hit the pavement. Scalloping or feathering is seen as a consequence of most likely incorrect camber and it can be viewed as early stage of one shoulder wear. You have just detected it early enough that you can adjust the alignment and if you have any luck, the tire may have worn back to normal.
Spotting: This is the name for tire wear pattern that resembles spots in various locations on the tire, as suggested by the name. The most common cause of spotting is improperly balanced tires. It can occur from slamming the brakes or the tire skidding.
Effects on Vehicle Performance: The unusual tread wear reduces the life expectancy of tires. It may also reduce braking and traction and adversely affect the safety of the vehicle on the road.
The Solution: Set an appointment with an auto service centre before it gets worse for the proper diagnosis and repairs to enable all the tires to hit the road uniformly and enable proper tracking directly straight.
Tips To Prevent Uneven Tread Wear and To Make Your Tires Last Longer
- Keeping your tires well-maintained is crucial. It keeps you safe, saves gas money, and keeps you comfortable while driving. Following are some straightforward tips you can follow to extend the life of your tires.
- Make sure your tires are cold and are inflated correctly. As mentioned above, the wrong inflation pressure will result in faster and/or uneven tire wear. Vehicle manufacturers do not only specify inflation pressures on tires based on performance products to achieve maximum handling, fuel economy, and ride comfort; they will also factor in tire wear. The manufacturers realize that appropriate, and, proper inflation pressure helps to maximize acceleration and distribution of vehicle load across the tires, cornering forces acting on the tread and braking. Check your tire pressure regularly (at least once a month), and be sure to check when the tires are cold.
- Rotate your tires regularly so you can maximize their life and improve their performance. A good rule of thumb is to rotate your tires at least once every 10,000 km (or at most 6 months).
- Have your wheel alignment checked once a year or every 25,000 km to avoid uneven tread wear. The beatings your tires take from pot holes, not to mention railroad crossings is enough to throw the vehicle’s tires out of alignment, plus any other serious pothole impacts or accidents that might have occurred.
- Be sure to regularly check your tires and inspect them! Inspect your tires regularly each month to look for any cracks, punctures, bulges, objects in tire tread, and uneven tire tread wear.
- Ensure tires are suited for the season, and change them accordingly. Tires differ between seasons, and depending on the season your tires age faster than expected. You are not changing the tires according to the seasons and you’re also putting your life at risk by not changing tires.
- Do not mix and match tires. Initially it may feel like you are saving money by replacing a tire every once in a while. But do yourself a favour and avoid mismatched tires. Mismatched tires will only increase the chance of uneven tread wear, tire defect and mechanical issues, and reduced tire life.
- Change tires when needed. Check tires regularly but specifically the tread markings on the tire to know when to replace tires.
- Check for tire balance. Unbalanced tires could reduce the life of tires. You should at the very least balance tires whenever they are rotated, or tires are replaced, or when new tires are purchased.
- Make sure the punctured tire is repaired correctly. You may repair a punctured tire depending on the size of the metal object and/or gravity of the puncture. It is best practice to have a mechanic repair punctured tire.
- Store your spare tires properly, keep tires clean and free of grease, gasoline, or any other substance that affects the rubber quality. For indoors, you want your spare tires stored at a cool, clean, dark place away from sunlight or any heat source. For outdoors, store tires off the ground ie. on a rack, and have waterproof covering with vent holes to allow moisture build-up for tire storage.
When you take proper care of your tires, you don’t have to replace tires as often, which ultimately saves you money, but more importantly keep you safer to drive.
Final Words:
The majority of situations with uneven tread wear on driving and axle tires are usually the result of improper inflation pressure.
The studies about the effects of pressure and that the industry offers little regard to incur or cover the costs related to the upkeep of viable inflation pressure, indicate that both items could be generating the same responses in the future.
Irregular tire wears, meaning those typically identified as under various classifications, usually have a true underlying cause such as worn front-end axle components or misaligned steering units.
There have been studies that have indicated that the cost per mile has almost doubled if we remove the original or reseeded tires early due to the tread wearing unevenly or wearing at an extremely fast rate.
The wear pattern is descriptive of the forces affecting the tire. Alignments, balance, inflation pressure, placement of the fifth wheel, and wheel width and wheel offsets, are just a few of the items contributing to tire wear patterns, as well as situations that affect tire wear in acceleration mode.
Most car and/or vehicle owners recognize that riding on bald tires is dangerous, and they should not wait until their tread has been completely worn off the surface of their tire. It is unsafe and others are at risk if you are retaining the use of bald tires on vehicles considering they lack road gripping ability especially wet road conditions.
Bald tires increasing the opportunity of hydroplaning and/or skidding to an instant unplanned stop. Further, if the tread is not bald but worn in various motion states because of unusual tread wear, this can quite easily deteriorate the life of your tire, car handling, and economy.
As soon as there are the first signs of unusual tread wears, the vehicle owner must act. To see these signs or in fact determine if tire wear/tear is an issue that can be avoided, vehicle owners must check the pressure of their tires at least once a month, have alignment checked on a rule time basis, and visually inspect their tires every now and again to get a year-round position for safety.
Time and the money being spent on periodic inspections, should always realize better values than confronting the risk and/or cost associated with vehicle operation during the use of tire wear irregulars or even tire wear patterns.