How to Keep Your Car Tyres in Good Condition When Travelling Across the UK
If you spend a meaningful amount of time travelling across the UK, whether that’s weekend escapes to the coast, long drives north for a proper adventure, or the kind of spontaneous detours that make a road trip what it is, your car tyres are doing a lot of work. More than they’d ever do on a daily commute, and in conditions that vary considerably more than a familiar local route.
The good news is that keeping tyres in good shape doesn’t require mechanical knowledge or a lot of time. It’s mostly a matter of knowing what to check, when to check it, and when something is worth acting on rather than leaving until later. A busy year of commuting and weekend travel can take its toll on car tyres, and Dexel Tyre & Auto Centre is worth keeping in mind if replacements are needed. Here’s what actually makes a difference.
Check the Tread Before Any Longer Drive
Tread depth is the one that matters most when the roads get wet, and across the UK, the roads get wet a lot. The legal minimum is 1.6mm, but at that depth the tyre has already lost a significant proportion of its wet weather performance. Most tyre professionals recommend acting at 3mm, which gives considerably more grip in the kind of sudden downpours that appear out of nowhere on a Scottish coastal drive or a peak district moorland road.
The 20p test is the fastest way to check at home. Press in a coin into the main tread groove and if the outer band is visible means that it is becoming low. It takes about two minutes to check all four tyres, and doing it before a long journey rather than after means there’s time to get it sorted without ruining the plans.
Maintain The Correct Pressure
Pressure is the most neglected check, partly because a tyre can look perfectly normal while being seriously underinflated. When a car is loaded up for a trip, the pressure needs to reflect that added weight. Normally there is a sticker inside the driver’s door frame indicating the correct loaded pressure, which is often a little higher than the standard unladen setting.
Driving a long stretch of motorway on underinflated car tyres will cause the edges to wear out faster than they should, and the tyres will also generate more heat than a correctly inflated tyre. Over a year of regular travel, that means significantly shorter tyre life than you’d get from a monthly quick check. Most petrol stations have air machines and three minutes of attention before a longer drive is one of the simplest ways to protect the tyres and keep the car handling as it should.
Watch for Uneven Wear Between Journeys
It’s easy to only think about the tyres when something feels wrong, but picking up unusual patterns of wear can help spot problems early on and prevent future issues. Running a hand across the tread of each tyre occasionally can reveal wear that’s heavier on one side than the other.
Uneven tyre wear often indicates that a wheel alignment is due. A car which has been driven on a variety of surfaces or has had a close encounter with a pothole or kerb that it didn’t quite manage to avoid can have misaligned wheels without any obvious cause for suspicion, other than the pattern in which the wear is occurring on the outgoing tyres. Fixing the wheel alignment before new car tyres are fitted will ensure that the new tyres don’t suffer from the same problem as soon as they’re due for replacement.
Look at the Sidewalls, Not Just the Tread
Everyone focuses on the tread, but it is worth taking a good look at the sidewalls, especially on a car that has seen a lot of driving. Any cracks, cuts or bulging in the sidewall are signs of damage which will not correct itself. The most serious is a bulge, which means the internal structure has failed, usually from hitting a pothole. A tyre with that condition shouldn’t be trusted for a longer drive, even if the tread looks fine.
That’s one of those things that requires about thirty seconds and is easy to work into a routine walk around the car before loading up for a trip. It’s also the sort of thing that is a whole lot less stressful to notice at home than halfway through a journey on an unfamiliar road with limited phone signal.
Know What’s in the Boot for Emergencies
This one is less about tyre condition and more about what happens if something goes wrong on the road. Knowing whether the car has a full-size spare, a space-saver, or a tyre inflation kit, and whether any of those things are actually in working order, is worth five minutes of attention before a longer trip rather than none.
Space-saver spares have a speed and distance limit, which matters if the nearest tyre centre is further away than expected. Inflation kits have a shelf life and won’t help with certain kinds of damage. Checking the spare’s pressure and the kit’s condition before the journey starts is the sort of boring but genuinely useful preparation that makes a bad situation considerably more manageable if it does happen.
The car that gets you to the places worth going deserves a bit of attention before it sets off. None of this takes long, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing everything has been checked properly is worth considerably more than the time it took to do it.
