Everything You Need to Know About Tires on Your Car Truck or SUV

Hey, everyone. It's Sue from 1A Auto and I wanna talk about tires. So, I wanna talk about a subject that not everybody wants to talk about, but it is an important subject because it is what stands between us, the road, and the safety for our loved ones, tires.

So, let's start real basic, tire size. Everyone knows that someday or another, you're going to have to get tires for your vehicle unless you're those people that like to trade their car in whenever it needs tires, I've seen a few of them in my life. But economy-wise and money-wise, that's not the wisest thing to do. So, we have tire size right here, real basic 205/ 60R16. The 205 stands for the width of this tire. Across the tread. Then we have 60, which stands for the depth between the rim and the tire tread. That's the ratio. R stands for radial, which is 99.9% of all tires. And 16 is the rim diameter. Taking a quick gander after the tire size is this number right here. Now, the letter you'll see on tires usually say H, V, the V will tell you...if you're a novelist about tires, you know what the V means. It's a speed ratio of the tire. The speed that this tire is made for from the manufacturer. So, this goes up to 149 miles per hour. Not that you're ever gonna do that, but that's how they grade this tire. H is normal one for a passenger vehicle or a light SUV. And that's 130 miles an hour. Not that you're going to be doing that either, but I guess, you know, you never know when Sasquatch is coming out of the woods and you gotta get the heck out of there.

Next, I want to talk about how do you know what tire to buy for your car? What size tire? Don't just look at the tire because if you have a used car or a hand-me-down car, even though you knew the person, they took Pete's word for it at the tire company and he's like, "Oh yeah, you could put on a 60 on that." But you don't know that because cars have changed. Back in the day when I was riding in a wagon with a horse, yeah, you could put anything on it you wanted to. But now, you actually need what that manufacturer wants on that car for safety and to get the most out of the car. Every computer system in the car now has everything to do with fuel mileage, shifting. Why do you want any headaches? I don't want any headaches. So, let's show you where you find the exact tire that goes on your vehicle without looking at the tire.

By federal law, every new vehicle has to have this sticker on the inside of the driver's door. It might be on the passenger side, but very rarely. Always see it on this driver's side. You'll see the tire. So, even if you can't read well, you can see the tire, there's your tire sizes. And sometimes they give you an alternative. It could say two different types of tire sizes, I mean, two different types sizes. And it always tells you what the spare is. Sometimes a spare is going to be smaller than the rest of the vehicle. That's because it's a temporary tire, temporary spare, not a full size. So, if you're a salesperson and you're buying a car, they might say, "Oh, I think it's a full size." Don't take their word for it. Let's educate ourself so when we go there, we're actually smarter than the car salesman. Open the car door and look real quick and see if the spare tire matches the size as far as the other front and rear.

Now, here comes my favorite. My favorite part of the tire is not even the tread, believe it or not, as important it is, I love the date because this tells everything you need to know about your car and the safety of it, especially if you're buying a used car or new car, it tells you how long it might have been at that dealer. So, look at the tires. So, 46/14 is the digits you want to pay attention to. Forty-six is the 46 week of the year, and 14 is the year. So, 46 is like the week of November 11th, which I Googled, I'm not that smart. And 14 is 2014. So, it's 2020, that's six years. This tire is six years old. Now, tread-wise, still looks good, right? It's got some good depth to it and everything, but what you're not seeing with the eye is what the rubber does behind the scene and under with the steel belt, the poly, the nylon that's making this. It is breaking down because it's got oil base in it. It's oil-based. So, it always will break down in the element. And some people think I got great tire tread, I have great tires. But then as they get hot in the hot air, summer, hot tar, this material is breaking down. You can say, "My tires are great," and next thing you know, you're doing 70 miles an hour on the highway and you start feeling a shake and a thump and it rips all over the highway, which I know you've all seen the rubber all over the highway. It's not always an 18-wheeler, it is passenger vehicles too because people aren't paying attention to what's happening below them, the tire. Most important part of the car as far as I'm concerned. It matters safety for family, loved ones, even the deer on the side of the road. This is important, man.

All right. Now, I know I'm going to go on and on about tires, but believe it or not, this whole thing's about tires. So, this is the extreme, dudes, extreme. Now, this tire I know for a fact came off a '13, 2013. Well, this is where you go I'm going to get a used tire and put it on my car to save a dollar, right? So, here's the date. I don't know if you could see that. Let me bring it around. I think it says 25 of '09, 25 is almost...there's 52 weeks in a year, 25 is almost halfway through. So, this is like June of 2009. Now, rewind, I said this came off at 2013. Do you think the manufacturer an '09 on a '13? Wasn't even born yet, was it? So, someone put a used tire on the car. Penny-pinching, they obviously don't do maintenance very well. Because obviously, it looks like they've gotten a little bit of a problem. Look at this tire. Now, I'm gonna really put the fear in you if you're a parent. This came off of a teenager's car. And you know, I know we all don't want to invest too much money in our kids' cars sometimes. There's extremists, some people that give kids cars that are better than their own cars. Safety doesn't have to cost a lot of money, but common sense goes a long way. You know, and I know what it's like. I know what it's like to penny-pinch, but I can show you the vehicle because this was a pretty good accident. And I think I know the cause of the accident. Could have texting been involved? Probably. But tire didn't help. This tire was on a car. It was on a car that was going down the road. That you and your family were on. I'm not here to preach, but I'm here to give you a little warning.

So, here you can see a pretty good view of layers that are in the tire. Now, this tire itself actually gives you, most tires do, but it will tell you what it's made out of percentage-wise. And it says two polyester, two steel, and one nylon. So, that means two layers of steel, two layers of polyester, and one layer of nylon. I'm going with this as probably the nylon, polyester mix on the sidewall, and then two steel on the top with one polyester mix.

Let's talk about tire pressure. So, a lot of people look on the tires. Still to this day, even my brothers and sisters. I see it and I get aargh. I get all aggravated because I speak, but no one listens. You better be listening. Tire pressures. I'm going to put it at the tire pressure. Look at that. Oh, I can put it up to 51 PSI. Let's do that, right? Because then if it gets low, I got time to spare. No, no, no. This is the tire pressure for the tire, which this manufacturer makes for multiple vehicles. This is the max this tire can take the pressure. Let's not forget that as the car goes down the road, heat expands. Oh, it does? Yeah. Heat expands. So, this tire, if you put it at 51, the person that made this, the company is like, "Dude, that's the highest it can go." "Oh, now we're at 53. What's that feeling? Why is it shaking? Hey, my gas mileage is really crappy." Don't go by that. Go by the tire pressure on the vehicle in the door. Don't go by the side of the tire because that's the tire's manufacturer that made it for hundreds of cars. They don't know what the manufacturer of that car has for payload.

Let's talk tire pressure gauges. Now, they come in all different shapes and sizes, prices, everything. There's no such thing as a bad one. Some don't work accurately, but something is better than none, right? So, if you're at a convenience store and you see that little box beside you and you're like, "Hey, buck 99. I'll keep it in my glove box." Definitely do it. Don't hesitate because you have to know the pressure in the tire for all reasons, performance, handling, gas mileage, and safety. So, you know now to check the door for the tire pressure, not the tire. If you have a gauge, a lot of times this looks wicked low, right, because it has that bump out. I get people all the time saying to me, "Oh, you didn't do my tire pressure right." I'm like, okay. Well, we have an engine here that weighs 350 pounds plus in the front of the car with the steel frame, the car itself. Of course, the front tire is going to look lower than the rear because there's no pressure in the rear unless you have a load in a pickup truck. If you have a passenger car, it's definitely going to be...doesn't have that bulge. Same tire pressure, looks different to the eye. So, if you have a gauge, which I recommend a gauge like this, it's not that expensive, maybe $25, $30, but you don't need an air line to take a reading. And then you can always get an air line or go to your local convenience store that has the coin-operated thing, and then still read it with this gauge because the gauge on that machine might not always be accurate. Here's a trivia for you, answer the question if you think you know the answer. Say the gauge, it's digital on the pump, and it's got a 25 foot hose, right? Now, I bring it around here, I'm putting air in my tire. I look at the gauge, that gauge is 25 feet away. Am I losing pressure from where it's reading back there, because that's where the sensor is, per foot of that hose? Do you think if it says 50 pounds over there that I have 50 pounds at the end of the line? Put your comment below. So, to you use a gauge like this, you don't need an air line. Don't press the trigger because you let air out of the tire. Just simply go like that. There's your reading. This thing is like 38 PSI. So, now, we know what the tire pressure is. You can have this, I know it's kind of bulky, can put it in your trunk, put it in the back of your car, put it in your glove box.

So, I want to talk to you about tread depth. Now, this is a real sensitive subject with me because I get 1,000 people saying to me, well, not 1,000, but you know, I'm pretty popular. I get people saying to me all the time, "Hey Sue, my tires are still in good shape. I don't think I need tires. Why did you say I needed tires?" And I said, "Well, I took my tread depth gauge and I measured them." And after like 35 years of doing this, I could tell with my eye pretty much good, bad, and evil. And I said, "But I gave a tread depth gauge and I measured it. And you're only at 3/32 to 4/32." "Well I think I can go to two because that's what the law says." Well, that's the law in the State of New Hampshire at least and Massachusetts, I don't know about anywhere else. But geez, that's really low. And I want to show you and give you a perspective of what 2/32 really is between you, the road, snow, and rain. And I don't think it's safe, but that's the law.

So, this tread depth, here's a gauge. So, it gives it in millimeters and thirty-seconds, which is a fraction. Well, unfortunately, we're still using the fraction and not millimeters. If I put this gauge, I can bring it all the way up. I find the mil depth. I don't find a wear bar because there's one right there. I can feel it. I find the lowest point. I close it in, hold it tight. And then I take my reading. I'm going to say between 8 and 9, let's see. It's actually between 9 and 10. Hey, what do you know? I'm getting old. So, that is a pretty good tire size. That's a great tread depth. But if you go back and think about how we talked about the year, this tire is six years old. It's got great tire tread, but it's still six years old. So, the rubber is breaking down, remember that. So, let's use the old Lincoln penny head measuring trick. I want to show you what 2/32 is on the Lincoln's penny head. So, back in the day, and it still goes around to this day, sometimes you check the old internet for like tires, people selling things, you know what I'm talking about, and they use any coin to show you the tread depth of their tires. Well, let's break it...the education out here right now. And it's supposed to be the penny, not the quarter. Believe it or not, it's a different size. So, Lincoln's head is supposedly 2/32. Now, we put Lincoln's head, oh, he's disappeared. What do we see? The crest of his shirt. Well, that's wonderful. But now, I want to show you exactly the size of 2/32 and you tell me if you feel safe.

Next, I want to talk to you about flat tire. So, you have a slow leak. You have a nail and you're gonna look at it yourself. Or even if you go to your local garage, the guy that always helps you out, they say, "I'm gonna plug it." You should say to them, "Can you patch it?" Because a patch is the proper way to take care of a hole in a tire. And just so you know that this right here from, take your thumb, thumb width, from the thumb to the edge of the tread and over. So, not right there, but from here over is a non-patching or plugging zone. And the reason is, as you can see on that other tire, that's just usually poly-filled. It's just polyester-weaved. There's no steel belt. Very little if there is. All depends on the brand. But that's the softest part of the tire. Let's just say it that way. So, when a hole...something comes in, breaks the steel weave, which you can see from the inside, the pattern on the inside has a hole in it. You've now broken the steel that goes like this, okay? You've got a nice weave of steel that protects you as it goes around the road. Now, you got a hole. What do you see? Now, you have a hole on that steel weave. That's an imperfection. So, as this goes down the road with the weight of the car, the weather, the way you drive, that starts to loosen up, right? Loosens up the steel belt, starts to get a little... Sometimes you'll see a bubble on the sidewall. That's usually caused by could be that you plugged the tire at one point or you hit a pothole so hard. Like you hit it so hard. It's steel, it's metal, and it's a tough form, but if you hit it hard enough, it'll always have a bend in it. It's an imperfection and it doesn't come back. So, that's what happens to the weave, the steel. You hit that pothole, bam. Now, that tire remembered it. Just like a muscle, has a memory in it and it's done. It's got a little indent. You can't see it or feel it, but eventually, you'll be going down the road and you hear tha-tha-tha-tha-tha, what the heck is that noise? My tires are brand new. That's a bad tire. Is it a bad tire or is it a bad driver? Well, or there's a bad road because if you live up here in New England, they can't patch them fast enough. Trust me.

So, I just want to give you a quick idea. If you don't know what a plug is, a tire plug, or if you want to have one yourself, you can purchase this very inexpensively, keep it in the trunk of your car or the back of your truck. Keep it in your own garage, get home, fix it yourself. Or you can just have a better idea when someone says, "Oh, I'm going to plug your tire." So, basically, this thing looks like a needle. That's where the actual rope plug goes. So, these are rope plugs. They're not rubber ones, but they get a coating on them. So, you peel it out and you just thread it just like a needle. Goes right in there. Put it right in the center part of it. There's other types that go straight...that you have to thread it through. So, that sits up in there. But before you get that ready to go, you have to find the hole. Hopefully, it's a screw or nail that's gone in straight and not at an angle. And you take a pair of pliers or cutters and you pull it out. Then you've got to bore the hole. And that's why you have this little corkscrew thing. Because you gotta get in there and give it a rough cut and just twist and rub back and forth. Just peel it back and forth. You're cutting away the burrs of the steel and making that rubber more acceptable of the plug because you have to have your Wheaties to put this in a tire. And a little quick keynote is if you are plugging a tire and you have a compressor by, fill that puppy up with air. Like more than expected, not above the manufacturers, but say it's 30 PSI, fill it up to 40 because this is gonna go in so much smoother with air in it. Trust me. Don't be that person with a flat tire, shaking as much as you can trying to get in there. Put air in it. Air is coming out. Pop it right in. A lot easier. Then adjust your tire pressure, cut the excess plug off, down the road you go.
Let's talk rotation. Knock, knock, who's there? Time to rotate. Why? They rotate all day, don't they? No, I think we should talk about what I feel is the proper time to rotate. And then you can go from there. Listen, I'm not a tire salesperson. I don't sell tires. I don't say manufacturer says every 10,000 miles. How do they know that? How do they know the condition of the roads you're driving? Hey, if you live on the flats of Texas, then hey, don't rotate. I really don't. But if you live up here in New England or anywhere, anything that has these frost heaves, bumps, bump, bump, bump, bump. That is constantly beating on the steel of these tires. And you need to rotate because of the weight of the vehicle. You have the way to the front of the engine that has more weight on it. The back is lightweight, it's bouncing around. The shocks and the springs or the struts, they're going to do what they can, but there's no weight back there. So, then you have a little bit more bounce. Ah, physics. And that, if you don't rotate, starts to break down the steel belt of the tire. And I know few of you are out there, you've heard a couple of times on the highway once you get up on that highway speed, tha-tha-tha-tha-tha-tha-tha, and it's coming from the rear of your car. What is that? Well, what it is is that steel belt has slowly been breaking down due to the lightweight of your front-wheel-drive compact car. There's no weight back there and you haven't been rotating. So, you're not keeping up with it. I personally do a rotation every oil change. Yeah. You can say, "Sue, you probably have a lift." Well, I do have a lift or even if I didn't, I probably would do it, but that's my interest, you know? But if you go to a place that does oil changes because you don't do them, which you should be doing them, you still can get a rotation done. Just ask for it. Fifteen bucks but it saves hundreds in the long run.

So, I've had people say through the years to me, customers, family, friends, "Hey Sue, I don't need tires. Look at my tire depth. It's beautiful." And I come over to the car and I look and I go, "Oh, you really think that's beautiful? Look at that. Look how tall it is." And then I educate them by saying, well, you're going to have to bend down. Let's look on the inner side of this tire. What do we see? Uneven tire wear. Now, this particular tire wear is due to alignment or bad part in the front end. And also look at these tires, dude, look at real close. What do we see? Look at all these rips. Now, let's take what we've learned, see if we can find when this was manufactured. Here we go, 20 of '13. So, now that we know the date, it's 20/13. So, 20 weeks into the year of 2013. So, this tire is seven years old. Now, it's what we call an off-road tire because it has the high tread depth. And it's got the like gnarly tread grabber and all that notches, the breaking down of the tire is also caused by heat, temperature change. It's things like that. You have to take everything into consideration when it comes to anything that's oil-based.

So, let's talk about tires and the necessity of them in what type of car you have. You have all-wheel drive, front-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, and why they require different types of tires. So, what I'd like to say is way back when, I remember cars being just rear-wheel drive, period. I remember when front-wheel drive came out and it was the mass thing. Everyone was buying it. A lot of people couldn't drive with it because it just felt different from what they had learned. We used to only put snow tires on the rear on a rear-wheel-drive car and just a good tread depth in the front. So, then front-wheel drive came out and people were practicing the same thing, but they were thinking the drive now is in the front, so I'm going to put the snow in the front and just the regular all-season in the back. What we found was the aggressiveness in the front with the steering and the lightweight rear of the car causes it to come around. Quite often, if you were driving in snow or heavy rain, you ended up looking at your back tail light, "What's happening here?" Is because there's nothing back there to grip the road, just straight tread and in a snow season, which we have around here, you'd find that thing doing a lot of fishtailing. Because now you're dragging it through the snow instead of being pushed through the snow. So, we now say you really must have four safety for snows. Regardless front-wheel drive or wheel drive, four snows. Now, we're talking about all-wheel-drive SUVs. There are hundreds and millions of them everywhere, right? Everybody loves them. And they're great family vehicles. They're utility vehicles, meaning all around for what it does. Yeah. It's all-wheel drive. That means that all the time, all four wheels are spinning and you have that intermediate transfer case. In that gear ratio and the design and the engineering of it, we can go for hours, but you do have to have the same tread depth on all four wheels, or you can do a lot of damage. Trust me, Volvo was one of the first ones to come out with if you did not have all four tires within a half a tread depth of each other, that transfer case wasn't happy and it would burn out and it's very expensive. Everyone's followed suit. It does handle differently. You have a blown-out tire. You cannot get one tire anymore. It just isn't that year anymore. You need to get four tires at the same tread depth. You can get away with 2/32 difference here and 3/32, you know, but you can't have 10/32 to 12/32 and 4/32. It's just not right. So, yeah, unfortunately, when that tire guy says to you, "You need four tires," they're not ripping you off. It's just the way it is. It's called advancement in technology.

So, the last question I want to answer is what tire is the best tire that you think, or what I think is for me for your vehicle? Well, you can always say, I've heard people say, well, whatever tire came with that truck or car, that's the tire and that brand, that's what you should keep with. Well, that's not really true. Unfortunately, car manufacturers are not thinking of you 110%. Yeah. They're thinking of their wallet. And it all depends on the manufacturer of that tire company that came out and said, we can do these tires by mass for you at this price. They're gonna do the engineering and they're going to be at the right tire size and the speed ratio. But it doesn't have to mean that brand for the rest of the life on that car. Because I can take... People have a factory tire and I'll say to them, me personally, this is my favorite tire. And if I talk them into it and I put it on their car, I've had them come back, 110% have come back to me and said, "This car rides better than the day I bought it." Tires mean that much. You cheap out, you get what you pay for, like anything in life.

So, when it comes to tires, how I do my research is obviously just years of knowledge and what I've seen when I put a tire on a balance or when I mount it, how it feels, how it rides. But not everyone's gonna have that. So, what I say to my friends and family is go online, look up a tire manufacturer or company, say a franchise national chain. And when you look up the tire, punch in the tire size or the make and model, however you feel comfortable with, and then they're gonna show you the tires and the sizes that are available for that car. Click on one of them, and then 90% of the time if it's a good tire company chain, they're gonna show you the ratio of what that tire, how it performs, dry, rain, and snow. The higher the number the better. So, 1 through 10. Sometimes the tires that I absolutely love don't perform great in the rain and the snow. So, I'm like, wow, really, I learned something that day on that design. Doesn't mean that tire brand is a bad brand, but for that tire size, it's not a great tire in the snow. And then I'll go below it and I'll say, "Hey, look at that. It's a 9.8 in the snow." Well, I'm from New England and if it's 9.8 in the snow, and it's only at that price, I'm gonna buy it. So, look at the reading. Then scroll down and read people that have written reviews for that tire. Someone will say, hey, it said 9.8 ratio rating and I didn't get that in my performance. So, just listen to people, read reviews, do your research. It's not that much. Spend that extra little time because it is your hard-earned money and you want to spend it the best you can for you.

We're not done? Yeah. Forgot about the alignment. So, do you need an alignment every time you get tires? Yeah, you do. And the reason for it is that tire tread depth matters on the specifications of the alignment. Anyone that tells you different is not doing you right. Bottom line is the fraction of 1/2-inch to an inch makes a huge difference on ride height, camber and caster. It just does. And I'll argue till the day I die. So, if I spent $800 on tires, yeah, I'm going to spend the extra $90 on an alignment because why would I want to ruin those tires? I'm not an expert when I'm driving down the road to tell myself if that road's great. I need those tires to be the best they can. If I'm going to invest that kind of money, what's an extra $90? Get a full-wheel alignment. They don't do two-wheel alignments anymore. It's just isn't possible. Unless you got the string and like...when I went to school, we had mirrors with string. They don't do those anymore. It's all laser operated and all four wheels are getting a reading. There's no adjustment in the rear on some vehicles. So, don't say, "Oh, I'm not paying for a four-wheel alignment." Yeah, actually you are because the rear differential in the body chassis, it could be bent from a good, hard bump in the road or an accident if it's used and you didn't know that someone got in an accident and that body's tweaked enough, that four-wheel alignment is going to tell you that your vehicle is never going to have a good ride. Your tires are always going to wear. Get the most out of what you spend your money on. Get a full wheel alignment every time you get tires. In New England, anywhere there's snow, frost heaves, recommended every six months. So, an alignment whenever six months or so, it's just getting the most out of your dollar in the stretch of everything for safety-wise, handling and no aggravations.

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