Fri May 4 10:14 am 2018 in categories Product news, Company news

Better safety and peace of mind – Maximise the service life of your tyres by monitoring their condition

Research shows that when driving with worn tyres, aquaplaning can begin at speeds that are clearly slower than normal road speeds. Drivers should monitor the condition and inflation pressures of their tyres regularly and not only during the tyre changing season. Safe summer tyres should have a minimum tread depth of four millimetres and they should be no more than six years old.

– Poor tyres are among the major traffic safety risks in summer traffic. The grip on worn tyres will collapse in wet weather, which will jeopardise safety especially under extreme conditions, says Matti Morri, Technical Customer Service Manager for Nokian Tyres.

In recent tests conducted by Tekniikan Maailma (5/2018), worn tyres started aquaplaning at speeds as low as 75 km/h. The best new tyre in the test only started aquaplaning at 88 km/h.

– The test tyres that were determined to be dangerous were nevertheless completely legal, that is, they had a tread depth above 1.6 mm. The driver has full responsibility for monitoring tyre wear. In addition to tread depth, you should also check the tyre for cracks and regularly verify that the inflation pressure is correct. As the tyre gets older, its characteristics will also weaken, so you should bear in mind that the maximum service life is six seasons. For the family’s second car and other cars that are used less often, you should ensure that the overall age of the tyre is less than 10 years. This is easy to check on the tyre sidewall where you can find the tyre’s year of manufacture, Morri says.

Maximise service life by rotating tyres from the front to rear

In order to maximise safety and save money, you should ensure that the tyre does not wear down abnormally. A tyre that only wears down on the inner or outer shoulder is a symptom of something being wrong. It is often a sign of excessively low inflation pressure, incorrect alignment or worn shock absorbers.

– Abnormal wear will have a direct impact on handling. Unless you act on time, the wear may even reach the tyre body and destroy it completely. For example, you should remember to check your tyre pressure once every three weeks. When setting off on longer trips or transporting heavy loads, you should increase the tyre pressure in proportion to the load, Morri says.

Many drivers wonder why two tyres in a set are often much more worn than the other pair. According to Morri, the driving tyres will always wear out twice as quickly as the free-rolling tyres. Therefore, you should rotate your tyres from front to back every 8,000 kilometres or whenever the difference between the front and rear tread depth is more than 2 mm.

– By rotating their tyres, drivers can maximise their service life, the safety of themselves and others on the road as well as save money. Rotating greatly extends the life cycle of the tyre set. Tyre wear is also greatly affected by the vehicle in question and the driver’s driving style and activity. You can save money by choosing high-quality tyres that suit your vehicle and driving habits, Morri says in closing.

Are your summer tyres in order? Track the following as the season progresses:

• Check the tread depth. The minimum safe tread depth is 4 millimetres; any less than that and the risk of aquaplaning will increase substantially. Summer tyres from Nokian Tyres make it easy to monitor tread depth with the patented Driving Safety Indicator (DSI) that displays the remaining tread depth in numbers.
• Check the sidewalls and tread of the tyres. You should check the surfaces visually for cracks, splits, punctures or abnormal bulges, since they may affect the durability of the tyre.
• Check the main grooves. Any large rocks that are stuck in the main grooves will penetrate deeper into the tyre while driving and may cause tyre damage. You can use a screwdriver to remove the rocks, for example.
• Check the wear pattern on your tyres. Tyres that are worn unevenly or abnormally quickly may be a symptom of problems with the car’s wheel alignment. In addition to safety, abnormally worn tyres will also affect driving comfort, so you should have the car’s alignment checked.
• Check that all tyres are evenly worn. You should rotate the tyres in order to make them wear down as evenly as possible. This will improve the car’s handling. Generally speaking, the tyres on the driving wheels will wear out quicker than free-rol
• ling tyres. If the tyres are evenly worn, you should rotate them from the front axle to the rear approximately every 8,000 kilometres. If two tyres are much better than the others, you should fit them on the rear axle for safety reasons.
• Check the age of your tyres. The service life recommendation for actively used tyres is 6 years and the maximum recommendation for the total service life is 10 years. The tyre's sidewall has a four-digit manufacturing time code, where the first two digits indicate the manufacturing week and the latter two indicate the year. If the code is 1717, for example, then the tyre was manufactured in week 17 of 2017.
• Check the inflation pressures of your tyres. You should check the tyre pressures every three weeks, since correctly inflated tyres will improve the car’s handling and reduce braking distance. Underinflating tyres will also be more costly, since driving with underinflated tyres will put an additional burden on the tyre’s structure and result in substantially higher fuel consumption. See our video for tips on checking inflation pressure.

Additional tips for summer tyre fitters

Further information:

Jaroslav Nálevka, PR manager McCann Prague, 00420 725 865 874, [email protected]

Zuzana Michalová, PR manager Nokian Tyres CE, 00420 603 578 866, [email protected]