Tires are a crucial aspect of each car, and they have a lot of weight on how well a car performs on different terrains.
Having good, well-maintained tires will ensure you get a good grip on the road, which will improve your handling, thus reducing the chances of an accident.
Having said this, you should now understand how essential your tires are and why you should take good care of them.
might get a flat tire and need to change it out; let us help you figure out how thong this will take to keep you prepared;
How Long Does It Take To Install Tires?
Tires take between 45 minutes and an hour to install, depending on the equipment and expertise of the person changing them. If you have the correct tire sizes, the mechanics will have time to inspect your car bolts, the lugs and align the four wheels to each other before you can drive off.
How To Change A Tire
It is inconvenient to walk into your driveway and find that you have a flat tire or get a flat while driving to work.
You need some skills to help you resolve the situation as fast as possible to help you recover and get to where you need to be, and that’s what we will teach you.
Before anything, you need to have a spare tire in your car whenever you drive since you can’t know when you will get a flat. Let us now get into the detailed instructions and help you change that tire;
- If you get an accident on the road with passengers on board, it might be safe to have them step out during the repair.
You need the car to be stable, and passengers could shake it and cause the jack to slide off, further damaging the vehicle and potentially hurting you.
Set your reflective signals to warn other drivers of your accident, so they slow down and keep you safe.
- Get your spare tire, jack, and wrench out of your car and place them at the flat tire. You need to get everything you need from the car and put them in one place, so you don’t need to go back into the car.
Find a rock to place at the back of the remaining tire on the side of the flat. This will prevent the car from moving forward or back, which keeps the jack from sliding off.
- It would be best if you loosened the lug nuts before jacking the car up. If you raise the car, it will be impossible to change the nuts since the car will spin as you try to loosen the nuts, and eventually, you would have to put it back down.
To open the lug nuts, your body firmly, and press counterclockwise at a position from which you can exert the most force. Loosen them a little bit but not too much since you could damage the lugs with the car’s weight.
- The next step in changing the tire is to jack the vehicle up. There are many jack brands, and you need to know how to operate yours. Loosen it or use its design to make it smaller to fit underneath the car.
It would be best to find a good place on the frame to put the jack to not damage the car. Avoid any soft or plastic surfaces that can’t support the car’s weight since they will break off. Raise the jack by hand until it touches the frame, then confirm that it has a firm grip.
Use the jack handle to slowly lift the vehicle to observe how the frame holds up. Never stick your arm or leg under the car since it can fall and cause damage. Be patient and cautious as you jack since it can take a while.
- Remove the lug nut from the lugs to free the tire, then take off the flat tire. Keep the lug nuts in your pocket or a tool kit, so they don’t roll away and get lost. If you are in a heavy traffic area but the flat tire at the car’s rear or off the road.
- Line up the spare tire with the lugs and insert it. If you have the correct tire, this should be effortless.
- Put back the lug nuts in a clockwise direction to tighten them by hand as far as they will go. Make sure you center the tire and tighten the lug nuts as much as you can with the wrench until they are firm, but don’t use too much force since you can move the car.
- Lower the vehicle using your jack’s release mechanism until it is low enough to remove; going down is much easier than raising it. Once the tire is on the ground, you can give it the final tight.
- You need to make sure you have equal torque on the studs, so tighten the wheel in a start pattern starting with the bottom nut, the top, and the sides. Put everything back in the trunk, and you will be ready to go.
How Long Can Tires Last On A Car?
Regardless of how good your vehicle is, you will not get much from it without tires. The tires are your contact to the road, and they will impact everything, including your speed and how your car consumes fuel.
Most drivers use their tires longer than the manufacturers intended, which reduces your car’s performance and puts you at risk.
You can avoid getting into accidents by knowing the right time to change to your tires, so let us get into it;
How long a tire lasts depends on several factors; your driving style, the climate you drive in, the type of tire you buy and its rubber compounds, your maintenance routine, and your vehicle. A general rule is that tires should stay for between 4 to 5 years.
This is approximately 75,000 miles. If you don’t drive a lot, you will get to use the tire longer than someone that drives for hours each day.
1. Type of tire
There are four categories of tires; summer, all-season, winter, and all-terrain tires. The make of tire you get and your area’s climate will influence how your tire loses grip.
For instance, all-terrain tires are for off-road usage; driving with this tire on pavements will wear out faster than they should because of the wrong usage.
Use the correct tire in the right environment, and you should have it for many years without replacements.
Manufacturers use different rubber compounds on tires depending on their use. Some are high-performance with soft rubber that can handle high temperatures and speed. Unfortunately, this rubber also wears out faster.
2. Treadwear ratings
Each tire has a treadwear rating that manufacturers put on it. The manufacturers assign this rating to a tire based on how it performs against a control tire with a treadwear rating of 100. A tire with a rating of 300 would take thrice as much time for the treads to waste away.
You can look up your tire’s rating on the internet or look at the tire since manufacturers print the details on them.
The higher the treadwear rating in your car tire, the longer it lasts, but this might differ depending on the age and how you use the tire.
3. Your driving style
Your tires will wear depending on how aggressively you drive. If you drive aggressively, you demand more from the tires; hence they wear faster.
You will notice that your accelerating tires wear out faster since you put more pressure on them than necessary.
If your accelerating tires are worse off than the others, it means you are accelerating faster than necessary, and you should slow it down a little.
The same thing will happen if you brake too fast since the sudden friction will burn through the tire in a matter of years.
4. Climate
Cold temperatures will cause your tire pressure to drop; thus, people in cold climates risk driving with underinflated tires.
Those in hot environments have the opposite problem; the tire pressure will rise and lead to excess friction with the road; thus, it wears out faster.
UV rays are also destructive for your tires. If you leave your vehicle in the sun for too long, you could witness the tires become brittle, and you will have to replace them sooner.
Conclusion
It takes about 45 minutes to inspect and replace all your tires at a mechanic shop. You need to replace your worn-out tires after five or so years, depending on how you use them to prevent losing grip and getting into accidents.
Should you get a flat tire, make sure you place warnings for other drivers to slow down and avoid an accident. It could take less than 15 minutes to replace the flat, and you will be good to drive off.
